Imagining Europe: Transnational Contestation and Civic Populism 3030813681, 9783030813680

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Imagining Europe Transnational Contestation and Civic Populism

Edited by Paul Blokker

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

Series Editors Carlo Ruzza, School of International Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Hans-Jörg Trenz, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scoula Normale Superiore of Pisa, Firenze, Italy

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also about changing power relations as they affect people’s lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national, European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties and solidarity within and across the European space. We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and democratization.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14630

Paul Blokker Editor

Imagining Europe Transnational Contestation and Civic Populism

Editor Paul Blokker Department of Sociology and Business Law University of Bologna Bologna, Italy Institute of Sociological Studies Charles University Prague, Czechia

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ISBN 978-3-030-81368-0 ISBN 978-3-030-81369-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Emma Espejo/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

The European integration project is in need of being reinvented by its own citizens. This is one way of understanding the organization of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which was launched on 9 May 2021. The European Union faces several critical issues, not least related to the pandemic, and its public health and broader socio-economic implications. The pandemic is only the most recent challenge putting into relief structural deficits in the functioning and set-up of the European Union. The EU’s ‘defecting’ is most frequently related to as a ‘democratic deficit’, but more broadly involves a ‘constitutional deficit’. A significant dimension of the EU’s ‘falling short’ is due to a lack of imagination and a persistence of political elites and institutions in outdated modes of operation, largely grounded in a technocratic pursuit of ‘scientific rationalisation’, which subordinates politics to expertise.1 The main critique of such a mode of operation comes from nationalist, right-wing, conservative populist parties and movements, who denounce any kind of transnational endeavour in the name of ‘sovereigntism’. An often overlooked 1 Cf. Habermas, J. (1971). Toward a rational society: Student protest, science and politics. London: Heinemann Educational.

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second critical force is, however, to be found in transnational left movements, who criticize the EU, but in the name of its reinvention. The EU should heed any return to nationalist, myopic approaches to European politics, and rather embrace the advance of a renovated, democratic and citizen-engaging European project. The transnational movements discussed in the volume provide valuable insights and sources of creativity and inspiration for such an endeavour, but their experiences also exemplify the great difficulties of a democratic politics beyond the nation-state. This volume is inspired by and (in part) the tangible outcome of the research project Transnational Populism and European Democracy (TRAPpED)2 that I coordinated at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague, between January 2018 and June 2021. The team included Ondˇrej Císaˇr, Petra Honová, Yuliya Moskvina, Kristián Šrám and (in a later stage) Manès Weisskircher, and our collective project focussed on the analysis of transnational left movements that have emerged in recent years and decades in the European Union, in particular DiEM25 and European Alternatives. A core focus of the project was on the systematic analysis of political claims and discourses on European integration and democracy as articulated by transnational movements. The team analysed a sizeable amount of documents, manifestos, articles and interviews in the media, as well as publications and carried out over 30 qualitative interviews with activists in the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, in part during the Assembly of DiEM25 in November 2019 in Prague, in part in other European cities as well as online. In this, the project used insights from both French pragmatic sociology, also referred to as justification analysis, and political discourse analysis, with the aim to analyse and deconstruct democratic claims, explore creative and innovative views of European democracy (in some of the chapters referred to as EuroAlternativism or AlterEuropeanism), and understand to what extent such transnational discourses contain populist dimensions. The analysis also attempted to tease out affinities with and contrasts to more traditional and in some cases institutionalized ˇ The project team acknowledges research funding provided by the Grantová agentura Ceské republiky, Standard Project 18-25924S.

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discourses on European integration, such as federalism and cosmopolitanism, (legal) liberalism, neo- and ordoliberalism, as well as critical discourses such as the discourse of participatory democracy, and sceptical ones, in particular right-wing populism. The team is currently preparing an extensive research paper on these discursive affinities, of which some aspects are briefly mentioned in the introduction. Earlier versions of several of the chapters were presented, inter alia, at the Fifth Mid-Term Conference of the Political Sociology Research Network (RN32) of the European Sociological Association, held in Prague on 2 and 3 November, 2018. Two dedicated workshops have been organized, one on ‘Europeans as a People. Populism beyond Borders?’ in Prague on 14 February, 2020 and one online event, on 14 May, 2021. The TRAPpED team would like to thank Petra Baginova, Michele Fiorillo, Seongcheol Kim, Panos Panayotu, Antje Scharenberg, Jitka Wirthová, as well as all those participating in various panels, workshops and informal conversations, for valuable comments and intense discussions. The team particularly thanks several members of European Alternatives, DiEM25 and Citizens Take Over Europe for their extensive availability, critical insights and inspiring and indispensable pan-European activism. Florence, Italy June 2021

Paul Blokker

Contents

1

Introduction: Imagining Europe. Transnational Contestation and Civic Populism Paul Blokker

Part I 2

3

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Transnational Mobilization

Left-Wing Social Movements Between Strong European Identities and the Challenges of Transnational Activism: The Case of DiEM25 Ondˇrej Císaˇr and Manès Weisskircher

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Alter- Not Pro-European: The Question of Europe in Transnational Activist Networks Antje Scharenberg

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European Space in the Euroalternativist Discourse: Detachment, Utopia, Strategy, and a Life Story Yuliya Moskvina

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Contents

Part II 5

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Transnational Populism and the European Union: An Uneasy Alliance? The Case of DiEM25 Panos Panayotu

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Transnational Populism: The Populist Challenge from the Left? Patricia Chiantera-Stutte

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Left Populism and ‘Another Europe’: Europeanization, International Sovereigntism and Transnationalism Óscar García Agustín Winds of Change, or Fighting the Windmills: Exploring the Economic Visions of the Pan-European Movement DiEM25 Kristián Šrám

Part III 9

Transnational Left Populism

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Transnational Constituent Power and Constitutionalism

European Constitutional Politics and the Making of Collective Self-Images: Technocracy and Populism as a Consequence of Political De-Constitutionalization Pablo Holmes

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10 Transnational Populism in Context: The UN, the EU, and Beyond Kolja Möller

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11 The Constitutional Deficit, Constituent Activism, and the (Conference on the) Future of Europe Paul Blokker

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Óscar García Agustín is an Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark, and head of the research group DEMOS (Democracy, Migration and Society). His areas of research are populism, migration, social movements and transnationalization. He is co-editor, together with Marco Briziarelli, of Podemos and the New Political Cycle (Palgrave 2017) and author of Left-Wing Populism (Emerald 2020). Paul Blokker is an Associate Professor in political sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Italy. He is also a Research Coordinator at the Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czechia. His research focusses on the sociology of constitutions, constitutional politics, democratic participation and populism. Patricia Chiantera-Stutte is an Associate Professor at the University of Bari (Italy) at the Department of Political Sciences. She was JMF at the European University Institute and is DAAD fellow. She is now coordinating a project on geopolitics with Villa Vigoni and the German

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DFG. Her main research interests are geopolitics, biopolitics, populism, fascism, history of historiography. Ondˇrej Císaˇr is a Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague and is also affiliated to the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is editor-inchief of the Czech edition of Czech Sociological Review. His research focuses on social movements, political protest and comparative politics. His current projects include climate justice activism and the role of expertise in the public sphere. Pablo Holmes is an Associate Professor of political and constitutional theory at the University of Brasilia (Brazil). He was Käte Hamburger Fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research (Duisburg, Germany) and visiting scholar at the Schulich School of Law of the Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada). His research focuses on sociology of constitutions, theories of global governance, judicial politics and constitutional theory. His work appeared in European, Latin American and North American journals. He is the author of ‘Verfassungsevolution in der Weltgesellschaft’ (2014), Nomos Publishing, Baden-Baden. Kolja Möller is a Post-Doc at the Institute of Political Science, Technical University Dresden. Before, he was an Interim Professor of constitutional theory (2017–2018) at the same institution and conducted a research project on ‘Affects and Constitutionalism’ at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Normative Orders’, University of Frankfurt (2013–2017). His main areas of research are constitutionalism, political theory and political sociology; recent publications are: The Constitution as Social Compromise, in: Michael Wilkinson/Marco Goldoni (eds.), The Handbook of Material Constitutionalism, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming); From Constituent to Destituent Power beyond the State, in: Transnational Legal Theory, 1/2018, 1–23; A Critical Theory of Transnational Regimes, in: Kerstin Blome et al. (eds.) 2016: Contested Collisions: Interdisciplinary Inquiries into Norm Fragmentation in World Society, Cambridge University Press, 255–280. Yuliya Moskvina is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Sociological Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague.

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She is an associate Ph.D. student at French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES). Her main interests are pragmatic sociology of critique, social movements and urban politics. Panos Panayotu is a Ph.D. candidate at Loughborough University. He holds an M.A. in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex. His Ph.D. project focuses on transnational populism and his research interests include post-structuralist discourse theory, populism, nationalism, transnational social movements, theories of democracy and ideology. His latest co-authored article appeared in Political Studies. Antje Scharenberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Media and Culture at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her ESRC-funded ethnographic Ph.D. research at Goldsmiths, University of London—entitled Transeuropa: Agency Beyond Borders in Alter-European Activist Networks (2021)—was conducted in close collaboration with the transnational civil society organization European Alternatives. Her wider research interests include transnational social movements, political agency and activist media, with a current focus on algorithmic agency and data feminism. Kristián Šrám is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Czech Republic. Besides an M.A. degree in sociology, he also graduated in economics. His research interests include dynamics of neoliberalism, economic sociology and qualitative methodology. Manès Weisskircher is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo. He is also an external researcher at the Copenhagen Centre for Political Mobilisation and Social Movement Studies (CoMMonS), University of Copenhagen, and member of The Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS), Scuola Normale Superiore. His research focusses on social movements, political parties, democracy and the far right.

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1

Illustration 3.1

Illustration 3.2

Illustration 3.3

Modes of forging European alternatives by left populism “Progressive” protesters at 60th Anniversary marches, Rome, March 2017 (Source Author’s photo) “Established” protesters at 60th anniversary marches, Rome, March 2017 (Source Author’s photo) “Left bloc” protesters at People’s Vote March, London, October 2018 (Source Author’s photo)

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 8.1 Table 11.1 Table 11.2

Classifying European discourses Value structure of economic policy—official documents Movement propositions towards change Democratic claims vis-à-vis the EU

14 221 317 327

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1 Introduction: Imagining Europe. Transnational Contestation and Civic Populism Paul Blokker

1.1

The European ‘Poly-Crisis’

The European integration project finds itself in an imaginatory stasis. Political elites display a general incapacity in dealing with the multiple crises threatening the European Union. Elites and institutions show a lack of imaginative creativity in proposing and seeking to implement novel and bold ways of moving the supranational project forward, a disposition which seems also to come through in the current initiative of the Conference on the Future of Europe. The EU is affected by an ever The author acknowledges financial support for the research project Transnational populism and European democracy (TRAPpED), of the Czech Science Foundation (Grantová ˇ agentura Ceské republiky) (Standard Project 18-25924S).

P. Blokker (B) Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czechia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_1

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larger distance between formal politics and European society, not least evidenced by the strong emergence of right-wing, conservative populism, promoting ‘sovereignist’ solutions to the European crisis. Recent years have seen an increased politicization of European integration (in terms of heightened—and frequently rather negative—attention to EU issues in public debates) (cf. Cooper et al. 2021; Della Porta 2020). The negative portrayal of the EU is not least the result of national political elites falling back on ‘traditional’ strategies of sovereigntism, ethno-nationalism, and right-wing populism, unable or unwilling to engage with a European, political solution. EU politicians and institutions seem unable to articulate long-term political projects and tend to ignore civic knowledge and competences as an input into the political innovation of the European polity. In stark contrast, various transnational civic initiatives—such as DiEM25, European Alternatives, AlterSummit, Volt Europa, and Citizens Take Over Europe—show imaginative capacity, aim at democratizing the EU from the bottom-up, and make political claims in favour of European solutions. The volume starts from the assumption that Europe needs a creative/imaginative solution to the multi-faceted crisis. The failure of the European Constitution in the mid-2000s has not eliminated the necessity for political and constitutional integration. A key source of the mobilization of societal engagement, knowledge, and political imagination—until recently, little analyzed in existing legal and politicalscientific research1 —is produced by (transnational) social movements or Trans-European Movements (TEMs) and networks. Such movements potentially promote a variety of creative solutions to the European crisis, often with (im- or explicit) political and constitutional dimensions but tend to be denounced as forms of anti-establishment populism (Harmsen 2010; Howse 2019; Stavrakakis 2014, 2018). The volume will contribute to scholarly and public debates by means of an extensive analysis and discussion of the transnational mobilization of European citizens, and the production of creative, imaginative, and constructive solutions to the European crisis. The volume provides a variety of analyses, including interdisciplinary ones, thereby contributing 1

For exceptions, see Blokker (2019), Bonfert (2020), De Cleen et al. (2020); Moffitt (2017).

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to debates in, amongst others, political science, political sociology, political anthropology, social movement studies, socio-legal studies, but also to political and constitutional theory. In this, it will provide a series of perspectives on populism that have so far not been addressed extensively (in particularly in relation to left-wing populism, the constituent power dimension of populism, and transnational manifestations of populism). Current political and sociological research on the European crisis has largely been focussed on, first, top-down or executivist crisis management in the EU, e.g. by means of austerity policies, reform of welfare systems, and migration policies, and on the effects of such policies (see, e.g., Dawson et al. 2015; Wilkinson 2021). A second relevant focus is on resistance and protest movements, which challenge the existing (EU) crisis policies (Agustín and Briziarelli 2018; Caiani and Císaˇr 2018). The focus here is, often, predominantly national and not on the European/transnational (cf. Scholl and Freyberg-Inan 2016). Third, research that does take the transnational level seriously—engaging with Euroscepticism, populism, and anti-establishment movements and parties—tends to be predominantly focussed on right-wing populist movements and networks (Hartleb 2015; Caiani and Guerra 2017), and much less frequently focuses on transnational left-wing movements with populist characteristics. In this introduction, I will, first, briefly discuss European integration in relation to radical imagination, and the role of transnational movements in reimagining Europe. Second, I will briefly discuss the transnational movements that figure prominently in the volume (in particular, European Alternatives and DiEM25). Third, transnational movements will be related to forms of populism and populist mobilization. Fourth, I will briefly situate the ideas, discourses, and narratives of left-wing transnational populism in the wider context of narratives on Europe (such as federalism, Christian democracy, and right-wing populism). Fifth, the Conference on the Future of Europe is briefly discussed as a significant context in which a further politicization of European issues may develop and (new) ideas on European integration may emerge. Finally, I will introduce the various chapters of the volume.

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1.2

European Integration, Alternative Europes, and (Radical) Imagination

The European integration project is largely the ‘hostage’ of a formal, institutional and state-driven imagination. In other words, perceptions of integration project and the imagination of possible futures are to a large extent harnessed in visions that take as the point of the departure the classical idea of state sovereignty. As for instance Jiˇrí Pˇribáˇn has indicated, the European Union remains deeply steeped in an understanding grounded in a politico-theological understanding of sovereignty (Pˇribáˇn 2017). It can even be argued that state centrism has become more apparent and widely shared in recent years, not least in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Current developments around the Conference on the Future of Europe—a collective and ostensibly citizen-driven attempt at imagining the future of the integration project—clearly show the weight and prominence of state- and sovereignty-driven perceptions of the European project.2 One of the objectives of this volume is to draw attention to the radical imaginary capacities of civil society actors. ‘Radical’ is understood here as the capacity to think beyond the current situation and its rootedness in distinctive, unquestioned core imaginaries, such as ‘national sovereignty’, ‘representative democracy’, or ‘economic growth’. As Gunther Teubner has argued with regard to transnational regimes, the ‘most radical contestation’ can be expected from ‘outsiders’, that is, social and protest movements, NGOs, and other civil society actors that experience negative effects of transnational regimes (Teubner 2018: S17; cf. Anderson 2013, 2014). As further argued by Teubner, it would be difficult to fully identify such actors with a transnational demos in the sense of the traditional idea of pouvoir constituant . Rather, such civil society actors predominantly engage in what could be called a pouvoir irritant or what others have referred to as destituent power (Patberg 2018; Möller 2018). As Teubner also indicates, those actors that tend to be closer 2 As becomes clear from the non-paper of 12 EU member states on the Conference on the Future of Europe, in which they argued against any legal obligations stemming from the Conference, see ‘EU’s dirty dozen pour cold water on Conference on Future of Europe’, 23 March, 2021, Financial Times.

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to, or part of, the regime, tend to be less radical in their demands. It should however also be acknowledged, as becomes particularly clear in the volume, that transnational movements in the European context do engage with a positive constituent dimension (as emerges especially from the discussions in the third part of the volume). As stated above, the European Union is frequently understood to be affected by a ‘poly-crisis’ (Youngs 2018), which calls for incisive remedial action. What is more, the EU crises are themselves part of a larger existential crisis which could be depicted as a ‘slow motion apocalypse’ (Reinsborough, cited in: Khasnabish and Haiven 2014: 8). A coincidence of significant challenges—regarding the environment and climate, democracy as a political regime, social inequality and impoverishment, and public health—indicate the need for drastic, rather than modest change. Such change needs critical, innovative, and imaginative thinking, which is however scarce in the context of institutional and formal settings. Radical imagination puts the existing status quo to the test, and questions its foundations. A key problem with modern political and social thinking is that there is a tendency to reify reality and a lack of awareness of the constructed and fragile nature of instituted reality (cf. Boltanski 2009). As argued by William Biebuyck, the EU is often understood as something that is ‘already there’ and as something we ‘already know’ (Biebuyck 2010: 173–176). In reality, it is clear that the EU is neither supported by a wide consensus on what it is, nor is there any broad understanding of where it should go. Rather, contestation and conflicting visions are highly prominent. In order to question the idea of an already given European construct as well as the idea of cognitive stability or comfortability, critical perspectives are needed that are able to bring out how the current instituted reality came about, to indicate crucial problem fields, and to show how the future could be imagined differently. As Rob Howse has argued, ‘[f ]rom the perspective of the left… there remains a constructive progressive agenda in and for the European Union, and what advancing this agenda requires is political imagination and shrewdness more than legal or institutional ingenuity’ (Howse 2018: 169). Radical imagination in this regard means a collective, social process, which in particular social movements and civil society organizations are

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well-placed to stimulate. Social movements’ raison d’être is often deeply grounded in the idea that radical change is needed: ‘social movements inherently envision and seek to bring about a fundamental change in the way society is reproduced’ (Khasnabish and Haiven 2014: 15). Hence, social movements’ activities—including collective discussion and deliberation as well as activities that are aimed at informing and persuading the public at large—are focussed on sparking the imagination, a ‘cultivation of common imaginary landscapes’ (Khasnabish and Haiven 2014: 14). The idea is that current institutions and practices are problematic and need significant change. A core function of social movements may hence be the construction of critical, imaginative, and innovative narratives, which make explicit the problematic manifestations of domination in the present.3 A critical role consists in a form of the demasking of domination (of for instance capitalist forces or engrained political elites) through what Paul Ricœur has called a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (Ricœur 1986). But it equally calls for a productive or creative hermeneutics, or the ‘utopian function of hermeneutic understanding’ and the expression of ‘aspirations for a better world’ (Kearney 2018: 201–202). It is in particular in this latter exercise that ‘surpluses of meaning’ and forms of creativity and ‘semantic innovation’ occur (Kearney 2018). Such critical, creative, and innovative forms of perception and articulation are more likely to find origin in civil society forces, and are much less to be expected from the side of the formal institutions, as the latter are expressions of an instituted reality, of mechanisms of reproduction, and hence forms of a reproductive—rather than a productive—imagination. Potential for significant change lies, on the hand, in the possibilities for the articulation of creative ideas and alternative understandings of current practices and institutions, On the other hand, however, such ideas and perceptions need to find both practical implementation, and hence forms of institutional reception, and even more importantly, need to be based on a political, constituent underpinning of processes of institutional articulation as a means of robust legitimation. 3

This is not to say that any social movement will engage in such critical narration. Clearly, civil society witnesses all kinds of form of mobilization, some of which rally around conservative or reactionary positions towards instituted reality.

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Transeuropean Movements

In the last 15 years or so, the emergence of transnationally oriented and organized civil society movements has become a significant dimension of European integration (Plehwe et al. 2016; Zappettini 2019). The now waning ‘permissive consensus’, often identified as the core relation between the EU and wider European society, the failure of the European Constitution in 2005, and the extensive financial and economic crisis that started in 2007, all contributed to bottom-up, transnational civil mobilization and organization (Zappettini 2019: 10–11). Transnational mobilization can be understood as an attempt to contrast as well as escape the predominant nationally rooted discourses of rightwing populism as well as establishment (neo-)liberalism (cf. White 2020: 1293). Below, I will discuss a few significant examples, which inform the various analyses in this volume.4 One important example of a transnational civil society organization is European Alternatives, founded in 2006, and in part a reaction to the failed and unsatisfactory experience of the European Convention. European Alternatives forms an extensive network with various local groups throughout Europe. Its core mission is to ‘promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state and imagine, demand and enact alternatives for a viable future for Europe’ and to ‘[a]rticulate a radical, long-term vision of democratic, just and culturally-open politics, society and culture beyond the nation-state for Europe and for the world’.5 European Alternatives is focussed on the promotion of extensive citizen participation, both in European institutions and in wider European society (cf. Zappettini 2019: 11–12; Plehwe et al. 2016). It provides a significant example of an organization that cooperates with the EU institutions, but at the same time remains independent and articulates in many ways a consistently transnational and societal discourse. Franco 4 An interesting example not further discussed in this volume is the transnational or panEuropean movement (now increasingly also party), Volt Europa, which was set up in March 2017 by the two founders Andrea Venzon and Colombe Cahen-Salvador, later joined by the current MEP Damian Boeselager. Volt shares some elements of the progressive politics and democratic goals of the (radical) left movements but is generally seen as more on the political centre, that is, left-liberal or social-liberal. 5 See https://euroalter.com/mission-and-values/.

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Zappettini argues that European Alternatives can be seen as ‘alternative’ in at least two ways: as non-conformist and independent of the dominant order and its main perceptions of Europe (as a Union of states) and as an exemplar of a transnational community of citizens, representing a manifestation of European society (Zappettini 2019: 13). A more recently established ‘movement-party’ is the Democracy in Europe 2025 movement (DiEM25), which incorporates ‘grassroots activism, networking, and electoral politics’ (Bonfert 2020: 7). The main protagonist of DiEM25 is the former Greek minister of finance Yanis Varoufakis, and in some ways it seems not unfair to understand DiEM25 as a continuity of the radical left heritage of the Greek Syriza party of whose government Varoufakis was part in 2015 (Syriza subsequently turned to the centre-left, after a split between Varoufakis and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras). DiEM25 was established as a pan-European project in Berlin in early 2016 and explicitly positioned itself against a European Union based on austerity policies and non-democratic technocratic governance (Panayotu 2017: 6; Fanoulis and Guerra 2020). The movement’s core mission is the democratization of the EU and originally set its objective as the organization of a bottom-up constituent assembly to arrive at a new citizens-driven European Constitution (by 2025). Since 2016, however, it has put its main political energy in more reformist projects around a European New Deal focussed on economic change and a Green New Deal emphasizing sustainability. DiEM25 was originally a social movement but developed a political wing in the run up to the 2019 European Parliamentary Elections (cf. Bonfert 2020). The movement is organized in transnational Coordination Collective, National Collectives throughout Europe, and Spontaneous Collectives in European cities. The civil society coalition Citizens Take Over Europe (CTOE) is different from DiEM25 in that it is largely a network of civil society organizations (CSOs) and a societal, rather than a manifestly political, actor. It is in some ways closer to European Alternatives, which is largely a social and cultural organization, without representative political ambitions. Indeed, important members of European Alternatives, such as Niccolò Milanese and Ophélie Masson, are important actors in CTOE (the latter as the main coordinator). CTOE was set up in

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2020, in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Conference on the Future of the Europe, which was originally to be launched on 9 May, 2020 (it was delayed for one year, to start effectively on 9 May 2021). CTOE forms a coalition of civil society organizations, European citizens as well as people resident in Europe, in a ‘common effort to promote a forward-looking and citizens-centred European democracy’. The coalition demands ‘a fundamental rethinking on how our European democracy works by empowering citizens by tried and tested participatory tools to influence decision-making, as well as through innovative deliberative methodologies’.6 The coalition includes some 50 CSOs, amongst which organizations that had been core players in putting the European Citizens’ Initiative on the agenda of the 2002–2003 Convention on the Future of Europe, such as ECI Campaign, Mehr Demokratie, and Democracy International.

1.4

Transnational Movements and the Populist Imagination

A significant dimension with regard to the imagination of an alternative, democratized Europe is that of populism. While (right-wing) populism is frequently denounced as a force that undermines the European project as such, with its calls for disintegration and a ‘Europe of the Peoples’ (cf. Becchi 2019; Scruton 2019), populism is equally a force on the left. A key question is how to mobilize popular forces in times of economic, social, and political crisis, and a frequently suggested strategy is by means of populism. As argued by Venizelos and Stavrakakis, ‘populist strategies remain a vital means of mass mobilization’ (Venizelos and Stavrakakis 2020). On the left, the influential political thinker Chantal Mouffe has explicitly called for a ‘left populism’, which is seen as necessary in order to construct a ‘political frontier between “the people” and “the oligarchy”’ as a ‘politics needed to recover and deepen democracy’ (Mouffe 2018: 11). 6 See https://citizenstakeover.eu/about/#story. Cf. https://voxeurop.eu/en/co-creating-a-citizenscentered-conference-on-the-future-of-europe/ and https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-eur ope-make-it/debating-future-europe-digital-spaces/.

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This ‘left populism’ is explicitly pinned against a ‘right-wing populism’, defending claims towards ‘equality and social justice’ against forms of xenophoby, in order to hegemonize ‘current democratic demands’ in a ‘struggle against post-politics’ (Mouffe 2018: 11–12). Within the focus of this volume, a key question is whether a populist strategy and outlook is equally relevant for transnational politics. Transnational populism appears as counter-intuitive and contradictory, in that, in general, populism is understood as a political project around a nationally bounded ‘people’. A populist friend-enemy logic frequently evolves around the defence of a nationally imagined people against internal and foreign enemies. As some of the chapters show, however, a distinctive populist logic can also be observed in transnational political projects, in which a transnational ‘people’ is pitted against a set of ‘transnational enemies’ (for instance, financial elites, bureaucrats, or powerful states). Transnational populism may prove to be of significant importance, in particular in contexts in which a combination of post-national legal, economic, and political interdependence is being threatened by reactionary national populisms, as in Europe (cf. De Cleen et al. 2020; Bonfert 2020). As amongst others Markus Patberg has forcefully argued, if the EU wants to avoid disintegration, it needs a ‘constitutional renewal’, not least since the ‘Europe of governments has exhausted its political credit’ (Patberg 2018: 263). The EU context is urgent, in that the postwar integration project, deeply grounded in legal and constitutional structures (as visible in a distinctive legal-constitutional structure with a strong apex court and primacy of EU law), is forcefully challenged by national populists forces, as evident in various instances: in Brexit, in the ‘counterconstitutional’ projects of—inter alia—Hungarian and Polish governments, as well as in other countries, in which populist parties pursue ‘sovereigntist’ projects, such as France, Italy, or the Netherlands. Transnational populism of a left-wing version stands out in its opposition to such nationalist projects. It is of importance, in that it does not fully return to the national imagination of democracy, as the national populists and many others do, but rather pursues a largely transnational

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imaginary. In this, it could be argued, it provides a more comprehensive answer to the contemporary predicament of liberal democracy. This predicament, as for instance John McCormick has argued, is increasingly one of failing electoral functions, plutocratic tendencies, and lack of accountability (McCormick 2017). A major question hence becomes whether a ‘democratic populism’ (Boyte 2020) or a ‘civic’ form of populism (Boyte 2003) can be imagined and practically observed. Core dimensions of such forms of populism lie in bottom-up participation, the positive evaluation of the critical capacities of ordinary people, a democratizing and pluralist common objective, and the general understanding of the people as a co-contributor and partner in democratic politics. According to Harry C. Boyte, democratic populism consists in a ‘movement building popular power to break up unjust concentrations of wealth and power. It is a culture-making movement, sustaining and advancing values of community, liberty, and equality. And it is a civic learning movement, developing people’s civic identities, imaginations, and skills (Boyte 2007: 3). Historically, the agrarian populism of the late nineteenth century and 1920s and 30s is relevant, as well as the broad movement around the American New Deal (Boyte 2007: 6; 2020: 70). The latter example maybe one reason why in contemporary times so many new ‘New Deals’ are being launched.7 Such civic populism appears equally manifest in some of the transnational projects in Europe, which emphasize bottom-up engagement, collective deliberation and learning, the valorization of ordinary peoples’ critical capacities, and argue against a reduction of politics to narrowly focussed and power- and elite-driven institutional projects.

7

The question remains if and why democratic populism should be called ‘populism’ at all, or, more specifically, when democratic populism might turn into other, potentially authoritarian forms.

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Narratives on Europe

The accumulation of crises in recent years, the persistent emergence of resistance to integration, and an increased politicization of the EU (cf. De Wilde and Trenz 2012), have put the contested nature of European integration and its future in stark relief. The manifestation of transnational mobilization and movements is directly relevant in this regard. In general, critical standpoints—often labelled ‘Euroscepticism’ or populism—are frequently dismissed by institutions and elites. As for instance Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Commission, stated in Zagreb in 2019: ‘We will never let the nationalists and the populists, who want to divide and destroy the European Union, hijack what our European way of life means’.8 As a matter of fact, the way the EU moves forward is in many ways closer to the call for a ‘Europe of the Peoples’ and state-driven forms of sovereigntism than to the radical left-wing calls for robust bottom-up influence of citizens, the development of strong programmes of social and environmental justice, and the need for the abandonment of neoliberal recipes. As a matter of fact, the latter forms of ‘progressivism’ have a hard time receiving attention from European elites and institutions. One argument in the book is that this is unfortunate and short-sighted, and frequently appears due to an inaccurate assessment of the demands made by left-wing transnational movements. Assessed in a careful manner, it becomes clear that many facets of the discourse of the transnational left are close to discourses of federalism and cosmopolitanism, participatory democracy, as well as to environmentalist and social-democratic ideas.9 The complexity of the European integration process, despite a sometimes notable simplification in political communication such as around the issue of Brexit, means that there are various, contrasting perceptions of integration, many of which cannot be outrightly dismissed as wrong. Transnational movements articulate distinctive, alter-European visions, which nevertheless show important affinities with existing discourses, such as federalism, cosmopolitanism, 8

See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_19_6315. The research project Transnational Populism and European Democracy (TRAPpED), which informs parts of this volume, is partly focussed on positioning the left transnational discourse.

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and also, in distinctive ways, and as analysed in this volume, forms of ‘democratic populism’. Some of the main discourses on European integration are part of the mythical origins of the project, notably federal, (ordo-)liberal, and Christian-democratic ideas (cf. White 2020; Invernizzi Accetti 2019), and are to various degrees close to the EU institutions (or, as Invernizzi Accetti argues, the institutions reflect distinctive concepts and ideas that can be related to specific ideologies). Others have been gaining ground over time, such as the discourse of participatory democracy (as in particular promoted by civil society organizations), and recently different forms of Euroscepticism, and in a related sense, forms of populism, which need, however, to be deconstructed to be fully understandable. In order to make sense of contemporary political debates and conflicts regarding European integration and the future of the European project, singular positions and the discourses that relate to these positions need to be distinguished. As argued by John Dryzek, discourses can be understood as a ‘shared way of apprehending the world’ (2013: 9). Discourses consist of bits of information which can be put together and arranged into more or less coherent stories or accounts. As Dryzek further notes, discourses ‘construct meaning and relationships, helping define common sense and legitimate knowledge’. Indeed, ‘[e]ach discourse rests on assumptions, judgments, and contentions that provide the basic terms from analysis, debates, agreements, and disagreements’ (Dryzek 2013: 9–10). Discourses in a basic understanding allow people to make sense of the world, to identify which are the core components that make up the world, to specify what are the relationships between them, and to grasp which future developments may be plausible and desirable. One distinction one can make with regard to discourses on European integration, of significant relevance for the debate on the Future of Europe, is between ‘prosaic’ and ‘imaginative’ positions. Prosaic positions take the existing situation largely for granted, and do not question key components/institutions/actors or relationships between them. Imaginative accounts, instead, imagine a different situation, in which European integration might be something rather different from what it is now. A further difference is between ‘reformist’ and ‘radical’ positions (cf. Boltanski and Chiapello 2005), where a reformist position indicates a

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stance that wants to change the existing policies, but not the entire institutional make-up. A radical position, in contrast, wants to change the institutional constellation and the overall framework, imagining a radically different one in its stead (see Table 1.1). The diverse and often contrasting political discourses on Europe have been identified by various scholars (e.g. Manners identifies ‘communitarian’, ‘cosmopolitan’, and ‘cosmopolitical’ understandings, Manners 2013; Balli identifies ‘ethnonationalism’, ‘European multilevel identity’, ‘Constitutional civic Europeanism’, ‘European consumer polity’, ‘Situated Euro-republicanism’, and ‘Europe of diversity and inconsistency’, Balli 2003; Nicolaïdis investigates the -isms of federalism, cosmopolitanism, and constitutionalism, Nicolaïdis 2020). The discourses briefly discussed here, that is, legal liberalism, (neo-; ordo-) liberalism, Christian democracy, right-wing populism, and finally left-wing populism, provide some coverage of prominent understandings of European integration, but serve here particularly as a context of, and as a contrast to as well as overlap with, left-wing transnational discourses. Table 1.1 Classifying European discourses Reformist

Radical

Prosaic

Solving the current problems by promoting re-invigorated policies (such as a Green policy, Migration policy or a deepening of the Single Market)

Imaginative

Re-designing policy-making by allowing for significant citizen input/engagement (as in the Conference on the Future of Europe)

Solving problems by proposing a different functioning or novel calibration of the institutions, or by instituting new institutions or policies (for instance, creating new institutions or policies, but within the existing technocratic mindset, such as a European fiscal union) Adopting a structurally novel approach to European integration, by significantly shifting power away from existing institutions towards citizens’ input (e.g. in proposals for a citizens’ constituent assembly)

Source Own elaboration

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One prominent European discourse—prosaic and little reformist—is the liberal-legal narrative of European integration. It puts the emphasis on the existing achievements of the EU, in particular regarding the rule of law, human rights, and independent judicial institutions as the very basis of democracy in Europe. Politics is understood as inherently messy and problematic, and to be guarded carefully by independent judicial courts. The liberal-legal system of the rule of law and strong judicial institutions is now threatened, however, by populist forces, which need to be contrasted by a strong defence of the rule of law, judicial independence, and trust in courts. The future of the European integration lies, according to this discourse, in strengthening the rule of law as well as the awareness of a shared responsibility for the preservation of the rule of law by member states and EU institutions. A related, but explicitly economically focussed discourse is that of neoliberalism, with dimensions that some scholars refer to as ordoliberalism. Also in the case of the neoliberal view, the emphasis is on a prosaic approach, which, for instance, in reaction of the financial and economic crisis, sees an intensification of the European single market as the solution (Monti 2010). As Quinn Slobodian argues, it was a distinctive group of neoliberal ‘constitutionalists’—which included German ordoliberals—that originally promoted the idea of European integration around an ‘economic constitution’ (Slobodian 2018: 183, 202ff.). The law was central to this project for a supranational order (Slobodian 2018: 184). The emphasis in the neoliberal discourse is on market integration (Monti 2010), the protection of the market by means of guaranteeing competition, and the protection of citizens’ freedoms by means of rights. The core idea is the single market which is to provide increasing wealth and employment. In this discourse, the rule of law serves as a means of protecting and regulating ‘natural’ market forces. It may be argued that the neoliberal, market-driven idea has become an almost taken-forgranted dimension of European integration and its policy ‘recipes’ tend to be put forward as ‘natural’, ‘essential’ or as ‘scientific truths’, without alternatives (Tuori and Tuori 2014: 222). A third discourse has been—as is widely recognized—a major driving force in developing the idea of ‘post-national union’, that is, the discourse of federalism. The federal idea potentially indicates radical change, for

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instance, in propositions for a federal constitutional order. Clearly, the European peace-project, grounded in the idea to overcome inter-national strife, is deeply rooted in federal idea. In the federal view, there is hence a suspicion of strong national sovereignty, and the need to prevent states from becoming hegemonic, as well as a strong emphasis on the need to protect individuals, or better human beings, from the abuse of power. A core problem is hence identified in the reified idea of the nation-state (cf. Nicolaïdis 2020). Only an increased federalization of the European project and shared forms of sovereignty can lead to a sustainable form of supranational cooperation and the safeguarding of European civilization. In the project of federalization, citizens are seen as important actors, including in forms of more direct engagement and in a constituent sense. Federalism has lost some of its thrust in recent decades and it might be true, as for instance Nicolaïdis argues, that a more inclusive and abstract discourse has emerged in its stead, that of cosmopolitanism, with a distinct emphasis on diversity (Nicolaïdis 2020: 1313; Delanty 2009). A less overt or emphasized, but in many ways crucial, fourth discourse is that of Christian democracy (Invernizzi Accetti 2019; Müller 2011). Christian democracy is highly significant in identity terms, identifying in the Christian religious heritage a core component of European commonality. It tends to stress continuity and a prosaic understanding of integration. The Christian-democratic view of European integration puts strong emphasis on the originally Catholic notion of subsidiarity, which stresses a partial and proportional form of integration, in which significant sovereign power remains at the national and local levels. Indeed, a natural European order would be grounded in the distribution of political competences across the communities that are part of the larger order (Invernizzi Accetti 2019: 254). The idea of democracy in the Christian-democratic discourse is a ‘constrained’ or ‘consociational’ one, which stresses elite rule and limited citizen participation (Müller 2011; Invernizzi Accetti 2019: 261–262). A fifth discourse, recently grown ever more prominent and a reason of concern, is that of right-wing populism. It can be seen as hovering between a prosaic and a more imaginative view of European integration. It is prosaic because it underlines a traditional idea of Europe, that is, as

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a system of sovereign nation-states. At the same time, there is some indication of imagination, in that the discourse promotes the emancipatory idea of the ‘right of peoples’ in a common populist struggle against EU domination or what is perceived as an ‘imperial’ EU.10 The right-wing discourse challenges the European status quo by claiming that the current European constellation threatens national sovereignty and erases national cultures and traditions.11 The key entities in this discourse are clearly reified peoples or nations, understood as natural entities. The argument favours a populist or sovereigntist Europe, in which the peoples, and their main governing vehicles, sovereign states, regain primacy. The future of Europe, or the ‘recreation of Europe’, based on an ‘authentic European spirit’, is hence perceived as a Europe of the Peoples. The peoples should regain important forms of political sovereignty, not least to contrast ‘globalism’, that is, the idea of open borders and open markets. A final discourse is that of left-wing populism, central to this volume. The left-wing populist discourse is generally closer to an imaginative or creative, and at times rather radical, approach. It is populist in the sense that it defends the people against the establishment, including political and financial elites, but the people is generally not understood as an ethno-cultural entity or a nation, but rather in terms of the ‘plebs’ or the marginalized, that is, those parts of society that are manipulated and exploited by elites. The virtue of the people lies not in its attachment to traditional values and national culture, as in right-wing 10

In the chapter by Kolja Möller in this volume, he discusses a very different manifestation of the idea of the right of peoples, that is, the case of the New International Economic Order in the 1970s. For right-wing (international) populism in the EU context, the Italian scholar Paolo Becchi’s Manifesto Sovranista provides an interesting elaboration. 11 In the words of Hungarian prime minster Viktor Orbán: ‘Everyone feels that our voice in Europe has been weak when it comes to our opinions on the greatest issues of our age: that migrants should not come here; that we shouldn’t have multiculturalism; that we should respect Christian traditions; that national sovereignty exists, and that nations aren’t a thing of the past, but of the future. Our opinions aren’t being represented with the weight they deserve. Voters who share our views on these issues don’t have enough influence in European politics… What matters is that in Europe there should be a political home for people of our kind: people who want to protect their families, who want to protect their countries, and who prefer cooperation among nations rather than a European empire. They should not only have a political home in their own countries, because we – Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People’s Party – are fine here; but they should also have a home at a European level. We must work to create this. I think that this political current will be a major force in Europe’, see https://miniszterelnok. hu/prime-minister-viktor-orban-on-the-kossuth-radio-programme-good-morning-hungary-44/.

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populism, but rather in its knowledge of the situation of the ‘common man’. This knowledge is to be used, according to the left-wing discourse, to radically revise the existing European project, by means of introducing a strong, bottom-up input of citizens, for instance, in a constituent assembly for a European constitution as well as in institutions regarding a more mundane politics. The main emphasis here is clearly on shifting political power away from political and economic elites to ordinary citizens, in the name of (socio-economic) equality as well as environmental justice. The future is perceived in terms of a relatively radical reform of existing institutions, not least by granting European citizens a larger role in decision-making. Left-wing populist discourse tends to draw on some of the other discourses described such as federalism/cosmopolitanism, but also on legal liberalism (cf. Blokker 2019).

1.6

The Future of Europe

Since the failure of the European Constitution (2002–2005) and the subsequent financial and economic crisis, the future of the EU has been uncertain and resistance to integration on the rise. Paradoxically, however, no comprehensive attempt to reform has been undertaken since the Lisbon Treaty. The lack of reform action has, nonetheless, not meant the lack of ferment of a range of ideas and perceptions of the EU’s future. The Conference on the Future of Europe, initially launched by Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and taken up by the Von der Leyen Commission, was launched on 9 May 2021, and is both seen as a potential opportunity12 and as an inconsequential side show.13 Undeniable are, on the one hand, the objective need for reform of various dimensions of the EU, and, on the other, the unforeseeable outcome of the Conference, due to both a promise of potential significant change and the 12

See Alberto Alemanno, Pourquoi il faut suivre la Conférence sur l’avenir de l’Europe, Le Grand Continet, 10 May, 2021, available at: https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2021/05/10/pou rquoi-il-faut-suivre-la-conference-sur-lavenir-de-leurope/. 13 See Andras Baneth, Just cancel the Future of Europe Conference, EU Observer, 19 April, 2021, available at: https://euobserver.com/opinion/151540?utm_source=euobs&utm_med ium=rss.

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unprecedented role of citizens as a result of the experimental design of the Conference, which at least in rhetoric but also in some of its components (a digital platform, the proposition of various citizens’ panels, and the inclusion of more than a 100 citizens in the plenary of the Conference) gives a potentially consequential weight to citizen input. The various crises affecting the European project, starting with the failure of the European Constitution, and rapidly followed by the financial and economic crisis of 2008, have rendered a narrative of the European status quo—grounded in an idea of the EU as a post-ideological and functional construct (cf. White 2020)—difficult to uphold. The Conference stimulates reactions from various political forces, thereby reopening ideological debate on the future of Europe. Federalist and like-minded forces seen in the Conference an opportunity to relaunch supranational and federal ideas (cf. Fabbrini 2021), whereas sceptical forces seek to disintegrate the EU by proposing a ‘Europe of the Nations’, in order to ‘take back’ national sovereign control. From the part of pro-European and alter-European forces in European civil society, the Conference offers an opportunity to articulate their—competing— visions and an opportunity to influence the future direction of the EU (cf. Cooper et al. 2021; Chapter 10 in this volume).

1.7

Overview of the Volume

The volume will address three main themes: transnational movements and mobilization, transnational populism; and (transnational) constitutional or constituent imagination. Transnational movements and activism are an object of study for some years now (cf. Tarrow 2005). There is, however, little discussion of how such movements contribute to the constitutionalization and democratization of Europe, how activists construct a common identity, and how activists from different backgrounds manage to pursue common goals transnationally. The first part of the volume will explicitly address and research these dimensions, by discussing transnational mobilization, the difficulties of organizing on the European levels, forms of engagement of activists, and different types of activism and claims. The second part discusses the emergence of a

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transnational left-wing form of populism, inter alia from the perspective of (radical) left political theory, in particular the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, as well as with regard to economic policy and economic populism. It addresses some of the key issues that have haunted the (European) political Left since its early moments. These issues include the Left’s relation to the nation and the People, the international and internationalist dimensions, the Left’s capacity to mobilize people in the name of a progressive and even revolutionary project, and the relation between economic claims and the existing economic order. The third part of the volume will link the discussion of transnational movements with that of constituent power and constitutionalism, constitutional mobilization, the idea of a European Constitution, and the future of Europe. A good part of the transnational movements invokes constituent power and promotes ideas of bottom-up, citizen-driven constitution-making. This part discusses the role of constitutionalism in relation to the European project, European constitutional politics and constitutional mobilization, and the role of transnational movements, transnational constitutional populism, and the constituent dimensions as well as constitutional imaginaries involved. The first part on transnational mobilization starts with a chapter by Ondˇrej Císaˇr and Manès Weisskircher, who investigate left-wing transnational movements from the perspective of the possibilities and opportunities for, but also obstacles to, mobilization and political action on the transnational level. Císaˇr and Weisskircher take DiEM25 as a prominent recent example of left-wing transnational mobilization. In their analysis of this movement, two key dimensions are focussed on: (a) the internal viewpoints of DiEM25 activists, that is, the identification of activists with Europe and their perception of the EU, and (b) the practices of transnational activism and the perceptions of activists regarding transnational cooperation. Císaˇr and Weisskircher stress the difficulties of organizing transnationally and the ambivalence in the positions of activists regarding a transnational identity as well as the internal hierarchy between transnational and local levels. A strong dimension in DiEM25 of ‘anti-nationalist Europeanism’ is in contrast with the actual practices of internal interaction and cooperation, including in terms of

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(a lack of ) internal democracy in that a small core group of transnational leaders defines the direction of DiEM25, even if accompanied by forms of ‘façade’ democracy in terms of a high frequency of internal voting on an extensive range of issues. Further complications arise due to multi-lingualism and the de facto dominance of English. Antje Scharenberg’s chapter provides an original, ethnographic engagement with and analysis of what she calls alter-European activist networks, such as European Alternatives, in the temporal context of the UK referendum on Brexit and the European parliamentary elections of 2019. Her discussion is enriching as she highlights six different types of actors and engagement with transnational politics, including those of migrants, feminists, greens and socialists, Afro-Europeans and decolonial activists, Central and Eastern European activists, and Mediterranean activists. She argues that commonality is grounded in a considerable diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints. Significant in her analysis is that she finds that Europe is often not of primary importance for transnational activists (a finding that is similar to that of Kaldor and Selchow 2015).14 In transnational activism, Europe is often not even the end-goal, but rather a means towards another end (e.g. environmental justice, post-colonial justice, or democratization). What is equally important is Scharenberg’s emphasis on alter-Europeanism rather than anti-Europeanism or Euroscepticism. There is clearly a wide range of visions regarding European integration, which cannot be reduced to pro-European or Eurosceptic visions. Yuliya Moskvina’s chapter analyses the political discourse of left-wing transnational movements applying the notion of engagement, as developed by Laurent Thévenot (Thévenot 2006), distinguishing between three formats of politics. The first type of engagement—engagement in justification—regards forms of justification by means of public claims and action. In their seminal work On Justification, Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot develop six such forms of justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Transnational movements engage in justifying work by means of the articulation of a common good which the European 14

Mary Kaldor and others recently argued that this seems to be changing and identify an ‘insurgent Europeanism’ (Cooper et al. 2021).

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project is to endorse. A second type regards engagement with a plan. Politically, this type of engagement is about strategic action, where imagined European space is constructed through strategic actions of creation, inventing a European demos, by collective statements, by collective events strengthening the sense of belonging and by personal participation in institutional structures that are connected on the transnational level. A third type of engagement entails familiarity and relates to how activists construct a common identity on the basis of cosmopolitan experiences. The chapter, by means of an analysis of forms of engagement, attempts to grasp the EuroAlternativist dimensions to transnational left-wing mobilization. A critical attitude to European integration is expressed in terms of a strong critique of elites and institutions, but transnational activists equally try to construct a different, alternative Europe, in part by taking recourse to populist instruments and the promotion of a pan-European populism. The chapter shows that left-wing transnationalism contributes to the creation a locus communis of European politics. Part II on transnational left populism starts with Panos Panayotu’s chapter, in which the starting point is the ambiguous dimension of populism as both a threat to democracy and as a potential democratizing force. Panayotu’s explores whether transnational left-wing populism might be a constructive force with regard to the democratization of the European Union, by focussing on the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). A key question is whether DiEM25 can be considered a populist movement and how this would relate to European politics and its democratization. By using a Laclauian discourse analysis, Panayotu explores these questions by analysing manifestoes, speeches, and interviews with key figures of the movement. Panayotu observes that a transnational populist project may promote European democracy in two ways, that is, by contributing to the construction of a European commonality or common identity and by stimulating the politicization of the EU and the public, critical discussion of policy alternatives. Panayotu concludes that DiEM25 does indeed portray some populist dimensions, not least by articulating the antagonistic schema of ‘we, the people’ against the elites, as well as the more positive endeavour to construct a people beyond national borders. Perhaps the most significant

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dimension is the explicit attempt to construct a critical and explicitly political agent on the transnational level. Patricia Chiantera-Stutte puts the recent experience with left-wing transnational populism in the longer perspective of traditional (radical) left-wing movements and internationalism. Such a discussion needs to take into account the original historical manifestations of populism and the relations with democracy and in particular social democracy. As Panayotu, Chiantera-Stutte discusses in particular DiEM25, taking into account in particular Gramscian and Laclauian dimensions. For Chiantera-Stutte, a main issue regards DiEM25’s attempt to create a hegemonic movement, that is, the construction of a historical bloc which manages to successfully create a novel discourse, in antagonism to the current social and political hegemonic system. Chiantera-Stutte hence sets out to analyse DiEM25’s political strategy and language from the perspective of Laclau’s understanding of hegemony. The chapter brings out the difficulties, even if not necessarily the impossibility, of attempts to create a transnational people. Chiantera-Stutte usefully stresses the need to situate left-wing populism within the larger context of political liberalism, post-Marxism, and populism. A core tension in DiEM25 seems to be between its continuation, on the one hand, of traditional leftist internationalism and, on the other, the attempt to construct a novel, post-ideological political force. Óscar García Agustín’s contribution discusses two different projects of left populism on the transnational level, which are labelled ‘international sovereigntism’ and ‘transnationalism’. International sovereigntism, expressed in the political project Plan B and the European coalition ‘Now the People!’, engages in the promotion of a coalition of several parties that want to defend national sovereignty against the European project. In contrast, transnationalism, discussed in the form of the political project of DiEM25, consists in the formation of a transnational political subject, in partial tension with national sovereignty. García Agustín discusses the Europeanization of left populism, and contrasts contemporary transnational left populism with the historical experience of Eurocommunism. He shows how imagining Europe is a key dimension of defining the left political project. The chapter concludes by indicating that the momentum of transnational left populism seems to

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be waning, but the challenge of closing the gap between the European project and European citizens remains very much alive. Kristián Šrám’s contribution provides an original discussion of the little analysed economic dimension to populism and its relevance in the context of the development of neo-liberalism in the wake of the financial and economic crisis of 2007/8. As Šrám argues, a crucial dimension to a movement such as DiEM25 is its challenge to the neoliberal status quo and its contribution to the politicization of the EU’s economic governance, both from a social and an environmental perspective. DiEM25 was launched as a direct reaction to the financial crisis and the subsequent Eurocrisis, denouncing the ‘authoritarian liberalism’ (Wilkinson 2021) of the European institutions. Šrám shows how the economic vision of DiEM25 is, however, dynamic and evolving, and analyses such visions by studying both the formal positions of DiEM25 and (a range of ) activists’ positions, also showing important contrasts and tensions. A core tension regards a reformist approach, which interacts with the institutions and puts forward ‘progressive’ economic ideas—stressing inter alia green, sustainable objectives and the regulation and democratization of the financial sector—, and a more radical, structural position, which stresses the bankruptcy of the neoliberal project and emphasizes the need for a post-capitalist order. Šrám emphasizes how DiEM25 is less of a traditional leftist movement and rather promotes progressive economic ideas, which do not necessarily contrast with the capitalist order. At the same time, however, there is a revolutionary component, which understands the current status quo as beyond repair. Part III on transnational constituent power , constitutional imagination, and populism starts with Pablo Holmes’ discussion of the European integration project in the light of the ongoing process of constitutionalization and what Holmes identifies as a process of ‘de-constitutionalization’. He significantly calls attention to an epistemological shift from a great interest in cosmopolitan and plural constitutionalist positions some 15 years ago to the current obsession with populism and the threat to the rule of law in Europe. Holmes claims that in order to understand the populist phenomenon, it is important to take a step back and reflect on the social and political conditions that have allowed populism to emerge.

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Holmes hence sets out to conceptually discuss the emergence of constitutional structures and the process of constitutionalization by discussing two prominent theorists: Niklas Luhmann and Claude Lefort. The main objective of the chapter is to reflect on the relation between law and politics and understand the populist phenomenon in this relation. Holmes draws the conclusion that the populist threat is not the most significant one. Rather, in the European context, it is a symptom of deeper, structural problems, related to an ‘authoritarian’ form of economic integration and a lack of democratic legitimacy of the European institutions. Ultimately, the deeper insight is that the current form of European integration—grounded in a logic of de-constitutionalization, that is, the lack of a constitutional protection of crucial aspects of social life or their removal from democratic processes of decision-making—strongly restricts the possibilities for social imagination. In Kolja Möller’s contribution, transnational populism is analysed as a diversified phenomenon. His argument is grounded in the observation that transnational populism is part and parcel of a process of the emergence of international political systems and their constitutionalization. Political systems such as the United Nations and the European Union are ultimately grounded in the ideas of national sovereignty and the ‘people’, which transnational populism reacts against and tries to overcome. Transnational populism hence tends to criticize a distinction between the ‘people’ and forms of political and economic hegemony. In Möller’s view, populism is hence a functional part of constitutional politics, both on the national and transnational levels. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann, Möller suggests the analytical notion of ‘re-entry’ to describe attempts by populists to not merely engage in opposition but in order to refound the political system. Möller points here to an intrinsically problematic dimension of populism’s rootedness in the ‘people’ (cf. Arato 2016), whose interpretation and role may shift from antagonistic and open mobilization against entrenched elites and powers to a reified, closed notion of the ‘people’ in which new power holders find their legitimacy. Möller diversifies between: (1) ‘rooted transnational populism’, which refers to inclusive forms of populism on the national level, with potential transnational dimensions of calls for emancipation; (2) ‘transformative international populism’, in which transnational alliances are

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mobilized against power-blocs and elite domination (as in the case of the New International Economic Order); and (3) ‘full-blown transnational populism’, in which the attempt is to mobilize a truly transnational people, ‘decoupled from the notion of national peoplehood’. The final chapter, Paul Blokker’s contribution, discusses the role of European civil society and transnational movements in terms of constituent power and the constitutionalization of the European project. The European project is found to suffer from a structural ‘constitutional deficit’, which significantly relates to the absence of explicit manifestations of constituent power. A short history of the engagement of European civil society and transnational movements with European integration and especially democracy is provided, most prominently with regard to the Convention on the Future of Europe of the early 2000s. Subsequently, forms of transnational mobilization are conceptualized and differentiated in terms of constituent articulation, constituent activation, constituent action, and comprehensive constituent or radical constituting claims. In the second half of the chapter, Blokker discusses political and constitutional claims, and resistance by (networks of ) social movements and civil society organizations in the EU (including the Democracy in European Movement (DiEM25), European Alternatives, and the recently formed Citizens Take Over Europe coalition), focussing on articulated constitutional critique and the promotion of critical and alternative constitutional narratives and projects. In the final section, the Conference on the Future of Europe which started on 9 May 2021 is analysed with regard to civil society claims, in terms of both reformist and radical claims for a more democratic Europe.

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Kearney, R. (2018). Exploring Imagination with Paul Ricœur. In S. Genusias (ed.), Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination (pp. 187–204). London/New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Khasnabish, D.A., and M. Haiven (2014). The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity. Zed Books Ltd. Manners, I. (2013). European Communion: Political Theory of European Union. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(4), 473–494. McCormick, J. (2017). La crisi della democrazia contemporanea e il grido di dolore populista. 30 IRIDE 539 (2017). Möller, K. (2018). From Constituent to Destituent Power Beyond the State. Transnational Legal Theory, 9(1), 32–55. Moffitt, B. (2017). Transnational Populism? Representative Claims, Media and the Difficulty of Constructing a Transnational “People”. Javnost-The Public, 24(4), 409–425. Monti, M. (2010). A New Strategy for the Single Market at the Service of Europe’s Economy and Society. Report to the President of the European Commission. May. Brussels. Mouffe, C. (2018). For a Left Populism. Verso Books. Müller, J.W. (2011). Contesting Democracy. Yale University Press. Nicolaïdis, K. (2020). Kant’s Mantle: Cosmopolitanism, Federalism and Constitutionalism as European Ideologies. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(9), 1307–1328. Panayotu, P. (2017). Towards a Transnational Populism: A Chance for European Democracy (?) The Case of DiEM25. Populismus, 1–20. Patberg, M. (2018). Challenging the Masters of the Treaties: Emerging Narratives of Constituent Power in the European Union. Global Constitutionalism, 7(2), 263–293. Plehwe, D., et al. (2016). Time to Go Beyond Interstate Federalism-or Something Different? The Response of New Pro-European Think Tanks to the EU Integration Crisis. No. SP I 2016–202. WZB Discussion Paper. Pˇribáˇn, J. (2017). Sovereignty in Post-sovereign Society: A Systems Theory of European Constitutionalism. London/New York: Routledge. Ricœur, P. (1986). Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press. Scholl, C., and A. Freyberg-Inan, A. (2016). Imagining Another Europe: Building a Pan-European Counter-Hegemonic Bloc Around an AntiAusterity Master Frame. In Comparative European Politics (pp. 1–23).

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Scruton, R. (2019). ‘Sir Roger Scruton on Europe at a Crossroads’, by Kathy Gyngell, available at: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sir-roger-scr uton-on-europe-at-a-crossroads/. Slobodian, Q. (2018). Globalists. Harvard University Press. Stavrakakis, Y. (2014). The Return of “the People”: Populism and AntiPopulism in the Shadow of the European Crisis. Constellations, 21(4), 505–517. Stavrakakis, Y. (2018). Populism, Anti-Populism and Democracy. Political Insight, 9(3), 33–35. Tarrow, S. (2005). The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teubner, G. (2018). Quod omnes tangit: Transnational Constitutions Without Democracy? Journal of Law and Society, 45, S5–S29. Thévenot, L. (2006). L’action au pluriel. Sociologie des régimes d’engagement. Paris: La Découverte. Tuori, K., and K. Tuori. (2014). The Eurozone Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Venizelos, G., and Y. Stavrakakis. (2020). Left-Populism Is Down but Not Out. Jacobin Magazine, 22 March 2020. White, J. (2020). Europeanizing Ideologies. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(9), 1287–1306. Wilkinson, M. (2021). Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Youngs, R. (2018). Europe Reset: New Directions for the EU . Bloomsbury Publishing. Zappettini, F. (2019). European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens’ Perspective. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Part I Transnational Mobilization

2 Left-Wing Social Movements Between Strong European Identities and the Challenges of Transnational Activism: The Case of DiEM25 Ondrˇej Císarˇ and Manès Weisskircher

2.1

Introduction

Most left-wing social movements in Europe have developed strong ‘proEuropean’ identities (Kaldor and Selchow 2013; Pianta and Gerbaudo 2015). While being critical of the real-existing European Union (EU), their ‘visions of Europe’ (Caiani and Weisskircher 2020) assume that their most important goals can only be brought about transnationally and not at the national level. Even more so, as ‘anti-nationalist Europeans’ many contemporary left-wing social movements assume that pro-European activism helps to curtail, if not overcome, the nation-state, which is often linked to the danger of xenophobic nationalism (Caiani O. Císaˇr (B) Charles University, Prague, Czechia e-mail: [email protected] M. Weisskircher University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_2

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and Weisskircher 2021). In the almost ancient debate on whether leftwing change can be achieved through activism on the national level first or only through transnational activism, many contemporary left-wing social movements clearly opt for the latter. The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) is among the most prominent recent attempts of such a left-wing transnationalism. Founded in 2016 by the former Greek minister of finance Yanis Varoufakis in Berlin, DiEM25 has developed active branches in several European countries. Its overarching goal concerns the democratization of the EU. Moreover, it aims for a socioeconomic and ecological transformation of the EU economy. In 2019, DiEM25 participated in the elections for the European Parliament (EP) (Downes et al. 2022). Prominent left-wing figures such as Ken Loach, John McDonnel, Saskia Sassen and Slavoj Žižek are on its advisory panel. On the ground, DiEM25 is a broad church of left-wing activists, including material and post-material leftists, environmentalists, and even some self-described communists, with or without the experience of previous political activism. What they share is the broader goal of transnational left-wing transformation. The literature has understood the group as prime example of ‘transnational populism’ (Moffit 2017), referring to its efforts to construct a ‘European people’. Moreover, the group’s left-wing ‘populist constitutionalism’ (Blokker 2019) highlights its goal of a more inclusive EU polity. Notwithstanding social movements’ euphoria for transnational approaches, however, research has emphasized the difficulties of transnational political action (e.g. Císaˇr and Vráblíková 2013; Kymlicka 1999, 2001; Imig and Tarrow 2001; Tarrow 2005; Weisskircher 2020), related to factors such as fewer institutional opportunities at the transnational level, high demands for material and cultural resources, and an absent common cultural background necessary for inclusive democratic deliberation and effective mass mobilization. Therefore, some political actors resisting the dominant form of neoliberal globalization, but keeping the vision of transnationally coordinated activism, have replaced the project of counter-hegemonic globalization with the alternative of ‘counterhegemonic de-globalization’ (Smith et al. 2018: 394). Similar skepticism

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has been voiced regarding the ability of the EU to provide an institutional and discursive platform for the articulation of a progressive political alternative (Streeck 2014, 2017). How to assess the transnationalism of DiEM25 then? In this chapter, we analyze two key dimensions of the organization’s transnationalism. We first analyze how DiEM25 activists identify with ‘Europe’ and how they relate to the EU, focusing on the dominant stances inside the movement. Second, we assess the practice of DiEM25’s transnational activism, examining how activists have perceived cooperation across national borders. Therefore, we add to research on DiEM25, which has so far studied the organization’s ‘transnational populism’ mainly at the discursive level (De Cleen et al. 2020; Fanoulis and Guerra 2020). Instead, we focus on the ambivalence between strong transnational identities and the difficulties of actually organizing transnationally. While empirical research on DiEM25 activism has focused on the ambivalent top-down relations between leadership and rank-and-file (Bonfert 2020), our focus is on the horizontal dimension of transnational activism. Our findings contribute to three important debates on contemporary social movement activism. First, we provide further evidence that ‘antinationalist Europeanism’ (Caiani and Weisskircher 2021) constitutes a cornerstone of the political identity of many contemporary left-wing activists. Despite the strong criticism of and disappointment with the real-existing EU among DiEM25 activists, they strongly hold on to European integration (Kaldor and Selchow 2013; Pianta and Gerbaudo 2015), while being critical of the nation-state. Second, our findings underline the difficulties of ‘Europeanization from below’ (della Porta and Caiani 2009): despite DiEM25’s strong transnationalism on an ideational level, the actual practices of transnational activism involve many challenges, both offline and online (Tarrow 2001, 2005). Third, we link to more general debates on the transnational strategies of leftwing actors in Europe (March and Mudde 2005), questioning the feasibility of such an approach, not only because of the challenges to effectively organize transnationally, but also because of the immunization of the EU against left-wing reform (Bickerton 2016; Scharpf 1999; Streeck 2017).

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Methodologically, we make use of novel data collected for the research project that forms the basis of this book: semi-structured interviews with DiEM25 activists. By providing detailed quotes on how DiEM25 activists think about Europe and reflect their transnational activism, we emphasize the importance of activists’ own perception, knowledge and experiences (Choudry 2015). Activists were asked, among others, about their political identities and goals, their views on the EU specifically and European integration more generally and their experiences as DiEM25 activists. We use data from twelve interviews with activists from Germany, a country with a vibrant DiEM25 community, and Czechia, a country with several DiEM25 local groups. All interviewees had no explicit transnational function inside DiEM25: We are interested in how rank-and-file activists relate to Europe both in their identity and in their practice. All interviews were conducted in 2019 and 2020, offline and online. All citations are anonymous. Second, we also refer to official DiEM25 publications such as manifestos and documents available on the organizations’ website. In the next section of the chapter, we discuss the pro-Europeanism of contemporary left-wing social movements, putting the case of DiEM25 in a broader perspective. Then we discuss social movement studies research addressing the difficulties of transnational cooperation. In the empirical sections, we first explore the transnational identity of DiEM25 activists and then their perception of the actual practice of transnational cooperation. Afterward, we contextualize our findings by providing a broader discussion on the transnationalization of contemporary left-wing social movements in Europe.

2.2

The Pro-Europeanism of Contemporary Left-Wing Social Movements

Most contemporary left-wing social movement players hold positive ‘visions of Europe’: despite a stark criticism of real-existing European integration, they strongly identify as Europeans and hardly ever reject the idea of European integration per se (Caiani and Weisskircher 2020). This is true for the dominant strands of a wide set of contemporary left-wing

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social movements in Europe, such as the environmental movement, the pro-migration movement, and even many labor actors. Activists’ Europeanism has continued to flourish even after the end of the anti-austerity protest wave and activists’ increasingly strong disappointment with the policies, politics, and the polity of the EU (della Porta 2020; Milan 2020). Moreover, many left-wing activists understand themselves as ‘antinationalist Europeans’ (Caiani and Weisskircher 2021), explicitly juxtaposing their European identities against what is understood as backward nationalist sentiment, often linked to xenophobia and racism. Europe, on the other hand, is associated with values such as democracy, liberalism or tolerance. From such a perspective, the notion of ‘Europe’ is also equated with a hope for societal progress and linked to a large variety of substantive concerns, such as environmentalism or pro-migration policies.1 Acknowledging the strong European identities of activists critical of real-existing European integration goes beyond the classical notion of ‘Euroscepticism’ in the literature, which has often focused on actors, mainly political parties, which are critical of European integration per se (e.g. Taggart 1998). Instead, social movement scholarship has emphasized that social movement’s stances on Europe should be regarded as constructive, proposing alternative pathways of European integration. Della Porta and Caiani (2009) speak of ‘critical Europeanists’ describing actors that approve of European integration while disapproving of the development of the EU. Importantly, the formation of widespread European identities is not only a left-wing phenomenon. Increasingly, far-right social movements have also favored visions of a common Europe, but fundamentally different ones. Their ‘pro-European nativism’ (Caiani and Weisskircher 2021) strongly propagates highly exclusive stances toward Islam and Muslim immigration (Bar-On 2008; Berntzen and Weisskircher 2016; Volk 2019).

1 While the ideational transnationalism of these activists mainly expresses itself as strong identification with ‘Europe’, issues such as global warming and asylum policies also point to an awareness of global problems and an inclusionary vision of what constitutes ‘Europe’.

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The Difficulties of Transnational Cooperation

Despite the strong European identities among social movement activists, however, many contemporary protestors, also left-wingers, have (re-) focused on national targets—especially after the failure of the Global Justice Movement (Flesher Fominaya 2017; Kaldor and Selchow 2013). The peak of protests targeting the EU occurred at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s (Dolezal et al. 2016). Since the turn of the millennium, protest addressing EU institutions has not steadily increased over time (Uba and Uggla 2011). These developments question the expectations of transnational enthusiasts who, due to the growing number of Brussels-based organizations, speak of the constitution of a European civil society. Although the EU is a highly institutionalized space that provides a wealth of opportunities to advance interests, this does not mean that these opportunities will be automatically seized. While left-wing social movements have often been identified as a potential source for ‘Europeanization from below’ (della Porta and Caiani 2009; Monforte 2009, 2014), the national rootedness of political action has been stressed by existing research on the Europeanization of collective action (Imig and Tarrow 2001). The growing importance of transnationally coordinated political action does not per se call into question the importance of national political arenas, but places them in a new context and raises the question of the effects of the mutual influences of these different levels. This issue is becoming particularly important in the context of the EU (Císaˇr and Vráblíková 2013). According to Tarrow (2001), we can expect the EU to develop into a kind of ‘composite polity’ that does not resemble the organization of nation-states, but at the same time cannot be described with the tools we use to analyze international organizations. While its organization will be less hierarchical and orderly than that of the modern state, it will also be more densely institutionalized than intergovernmental organizations. According to such a perspective, the EU is a complex institutional structure that provides different types of actors with different opportunities for their transnational alliances but does not automatically

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turn nationally rooted actors into transnational ones. Like other international organizations, the EU only serves as a ‘coral reef ’ facilitating transnational mobilization (Tarrow 2005). Still, even then transnational political activism faces severe challenges because of the resources, material and cultural, needed to coordinate it. Simply put, it is much more demanding—in terms of time, money, knowledge, and cultural capital such as foreign language skills—to organize collectively on the European level than to do it in the tried and tested context of the nation-state. Furthermore, and crucially, there is also only a limited common cultural background shared among the different European populations that would facilitate political deliberation and exchange (Kymlicka 1999, 2001; Imig and Tarrow 2001; Tarrow 2005; Streeck 2014). Many recent examples of mobilization targeting the EU level illustrate these difficulties. Even in the case of European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) campaigns, where activists petition the European Commission to initiate EU legislation, national strongholds have been found to be decisive for mobilization efforts (Weisskircher 2019). Also for protest against the international treaties of ACTA and TTIP, it was national contexts that strongly shaped mobilization (Oleart 2021; Rone 2020).

2.4

The Strong European Identities of DiEM25 Activists

The key goal of DiEM25 is to change EU institutions. In doing so, DiEM25 intends to act as transnational alternative to what it sees as EU neoliberalism and as failed national responses to it. DiEM25 selfidentifies as an inherently transnational, progressive movement. This is reflected in its official self-description as European movement, which is one of the core messages of its many publications: DiEM25 is a pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats. We believe that the European Union is disintegrating. Europeans are losing their faith in the possibility of European solutions to European problems. At the same time

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as faith in the EU is waning, we see a rise of misanthropy, xenophobia and toxic nationalism. (DiEM25 undated)

The organization clearly favors European integration over ‘left-wing nationalism’. Despite its harsh criticism of real-existing European integration, DiEM25 fears the dissolution of the EU: In its own interpretation, DiEM25 strives for a radical transformation of the EU to save it from disintegration (DiEM25 2016). The organization’s focus on European integration is so principled that it aims to create a ‘European people’ (Moffit 2017; De Cleen et al. 2020), underlining its ideational focus on Europe. Importantly, beyond official publications, such pro-European views are also part of the core identity of rank-and-file activists. DiEM25 activists strongly correspond to the ‘anti-nationalist Europeanism’ dominant in the contemporary European protest arena. We now show how the DiEM25 rank-and-file members strongly identify with ‘Europe’ while dismissing the idea of the nation-state.

2.4.1 Principled Support for the Idea of European Integration Many activists point to DiEM25’s focus on Europe as key motivation for their political activism. For this activist, transnationalism constitutes a unique selling point of the organization: I have been in many political and interest groups in my life so far. But this positive approach to transnationalism, meaning developing an idea to think Europe differently, to think outside and over this EU-construct, a way to establish a transnational, yeah, a Progressive International , these were the things that spoke to me. And I also considered the German attitude, or German politics in this context, disastrous for European unity, so fully focused on the nation, and I had the impression something could grow out of this [DiEM25], something that would both fully meet my political ideas and that would have this transnational quality to it. (German activist, Int. 28, p. 1)

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Activists underline their belief in effective problem–solving at the European level when explaining their support for European integration, relating this to salient issues such as global warming, migration or economic transformation: As for me, the most fundamental idea is trans-European cooperation. I believe that the challenges we face as humanity are so fundamental that they cannot be solved at the level of a nation-state, even more in such a small state as Czechia, and that is why I am a big fan of the idea of the EU. (Czech activist, Int. 14, p. 2)

Importantly, DiEM25 activists aim to diffuse European identities among a broader population. Many regard themselves as pioneers: So, in fact, I imagine it somehow like the Prague Spring, at least in the sense that the people will be active. And because it will be their project, suddenly Europe will not be a project of elites or financiers, but a project of the people. So it immediately creates different possibilities than when someone just dictates something to you, or the so-called elected politicians determine something. And I say that again, and I see it as the same, we are talking about the European identity, in the process of that creation, that identity can be formed. Just start the process! We can talk about what the final form should look like, but just start the process. The process itself, in my opinion, is worth supporting, and politically completely fruitful. This is absolutely fantastic if we can just start the process. And then somehow it would work. (Czech activist, Int. 8, p. 20)

2.4.2 A Rejection of the Nation-State and Nationalism The strong approval of European integration goes along with a strong rejection of the nation-state by many activists, especially German and younger ones. The following statement underlines that many activists do not regard the nation-state as effective level of government to respond to political problems with global implications:

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For me, the most thrilling is to think about how to have a European roof on the one hand and the communal level on the other hand. So, this nation-state in the middle does not actually play such a big role, mainly because I think that, in a fully globalized world, the concept of the nation-state is no longer sustainable. (German activist, Int. 29, p. 3)

Apart from their focus on the European polity, many activists support more autonomy for subnational politics, also at the expense of the nation-state, as emphasized by this activist: So, in the long term, I am a fan of the idea that Europe should develop more into a Europe of regions, regional units, to give them more discursive control, and to weaken the nation-state. (German activist, Int. 25, p. 5)

Beyond these questions of political governance, activists link their dismissal of the nation state to a rejection of xenophobic nationalism and discrimination against foreigners. In line with DiEM25 goals more broadly, the following activist links these views also to the rejection of an exit from the EU: It’s about internationalism, that DiEM rejects sorting people into natives and foreigners, occupying borders, expelling people, and [that DiEM25] rejects those notions that our nation is better than others, that leaving the Union will be better for us. (Czech activist, Int. 7, p. 2)

In Germany, a reference to ‘national’ concerns is so strongly opposed on a symbolic level that DiEM25’s ‘national’ collective was even renamed into the ‘federal’ collective:

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All the European countries have a committee that calls itself the national collective, or, in our case, the federal collective because we don’t like the word nation so much. (German activist, Int. 27, p. 2)

In Germany, activists compare DiEM25 with another prominent leftwing group called Aufstehen, a top-down project initiated by parts of the country’s radical left party Die Linke. The group is rejected because of its alleged lack of Europeanism: Those in favor of a stronger connection with Aufstehen, [those are] people who are not so far away when it comes to politics, but what they miss is exactly this, this transnational, pro-European stance and it would make total sense, to reach out and say, that we are here as well. And I think it makes sense not just to stay in one’s own national box and it makes sense, too, to perhaps extend the issue of human rights and social rights to all people that are here, not to have some kind of domestic bonus. (German activist, Int. 28, p. 5)

In sum, the interviewed DiEM25 activists hold strong European identities which go along with a rejection of the nation-state and, often equated, xenophobic nationalism. They perceive the national and international levels as mutually exclusive spheres of action, while clearly preferring the European one.

2.5

The Challenges of Transnational Cooperation Inside DiEM25

Internally, DiEM25 has a complex set of bodies, including a transnational central executive formed by twelve elected members, so-called Spontaneous Collectives which organize local-level activism or topical interests, as well as National Collectives at the level of individual states.

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To understand transnational organization and decision-making inside DiEM25, its all-member votes on policy proposals are crucial: DiEM25 strives to promote participatory democracy in the formulation of its policies and practices. Policies at all levels (local, regional, national and panEuropean) are approved in all-member votes. Even when a policy concerns a local or national issue, all members (across Europe) must approve it by means of an all-member vote. This transnational approach is inherent in DiEM25’s radical transnationalism. (DiEM25 2020)

Beyond this crucial form of online decision-making, there are other important acts of transnational engagement, also ‘offline’, such as meetings and trainings where activists from all over Europe are supposed to assemble. A key transnational event was the DiEM25 Prague assembly in 2019, where the strategic direction of the organization was debated. ‘Billionaire, pay your share!’, a transnationally organized event framed as ‘European demonstration’ planned for March 28, 2020 in Luxembourg had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. Discussing their transnational activism, DiEM25 members are aware of the practical challenges that its European scope poses. When discussing transnational cooperation, they refer not only to the upsides, but also point to obstacles.

2.5.1 European Goals as Strategic Obstacle Activists are aware of the fundamental challenge posed by DiEM25’s transnationalism for attracting a wider constituency. More specifically, one activist sees the abstract goals as clear strategic challenge: I would say it’s different because Proalt [a local activist organization] was consistently active from below, consistently from below‚ while DiEM does have both elements in place, firstly. Secondly, it [DiEM25] is national and intersupranational pan-European, thirdly, at the time when Proalt was formed, it was a protest against the Neˇcas’s government, it existed already under Topolánek, when it was born, but in the Neˇcas’s period it got firmly established. It was a clear protest with a clear opponent, even enemy. With DiEM

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it is seemingly multiplied and there are also more of those topics, it follows from its pan-European character that it is a bit more complicated… (Czech activist, Int. 20, p. 2)

In a similar vein, one activist thinks that the main concern of DiEM25— a reform of the EU—is too far away from the concerns of the average population, making effective mobilization difficult: But actually the problem is that activism, or as I perceive it, that nothing much is happening, but it [DiEM25] is quite demanding, and the agenda does not really interest anyone in the Czech Republic, just talk about the democratization of the EU, etc. (Czech activist, Int. 8, p. 3)

A similar strategic concern is expressed by another activist who regards DiEM25’s Europeanism as detached from the concerns of a broader population: I think that there is Europeanism, this type of identity exists, and the political mobilization of that Europeanism is DiEM. But the problem is that Europeanism is, the identity of Europeanism is directed at the people of the bigger cities, at the global nomads, the more educated layer in society that can use the Internet and see it as an opportunity, and so on. Meanwhile, with the others, with the others, the Yellow Vests, the people from Karlovy Vary, there is simply not and cannot be an identity of Europeanism, they are more afraid of it and cling to the national identity. So here Europe is divided, between that group of cosmopolitan universalists and Europeans, and those people who are just on the fringes, are afraid and trying to keep their heads in the sand of some nation-state and traditional values... So there is a huge difference I think between two Europes, and to overcome it will be the challenge. It will have to be done somehow. (Czech activist, Int. 8, p. 10)

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The following activist links the focus on European integration to the sociocultural class dominant inside DiEM25: …so I think it’s tragic that currently DiEM25 represents that cosmopolitan educated sort of privileged people here, I would say from the middle and upper middle classes, but as it seems to me, DiEM is aware of this weakness to a certain extent, and I believe that it wants to work on it in some way. Among other things, when we go back to how people talked about what DiEM should do in the Czech Republic, that is it again, when we try to translate these big visions, European politics, into those practical everyday situations of normal people, so we can simply involve in the movement just others than university educated people who have friends from Bologna to Dublin and for half a year they are somewhere outside their permanent residence, somewhere in Europe at a university or on a business trip and the like. It is precisely by translating those policies and the importance of saving the EU into the daily lives of people, simply ordinary people, that we have the opportunity to involve them in our movement and, in fact, to have new members who will no longer be only from that [cosmopolitan] group. (Czech activist, Int. 14, p. 13)

2.5.2 Voting on Too Many Issues Beyond strategic concerns, activists also discuss the processes of internal decision-making. In all-members votes, activists can decide about all issues online, even when they address the affairs of specific local or national DiEM25 branches. Views on this form of decision-making are ambivalent: It’s actually a bit paradoxical that a Portuguese is electing a [DiEM25] member in the Czech Republic. (Czech activist, Int. 8, p. 2)

Activists indicate that they often do not have the knowledge to decide about issues that are of local or national importance elsewhere:

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Yeah, it is impossible. I can’t be there for all of this. It is simply too much. One has to trust the others that they will do it properly. It is impossible, it cannot be done. For example, I could vote in the national committee of Hungary, or elsewhere, Greece, but I don’t do it. I don’t know the people and the topics. There, I can see that the national principle makes sense. […] I am always asked to vote here and there… (German activist, Int. 24, p. 11)

In a similar vein, another activist questions the quality behind allmember votes and doubts whether these express substantive preferences: I theoretically got 150 votes, in theory it could be 150 votes from the Czech Republic, but on the other hand it could be 150 votes from all over Europe, when someone in Athens decided that I had a nice face and I looked old enough to know what I’m talking about. (Czech activist, Int. 9, p. 10)

In Germany, a majority of DiEM25 activists was against running for the EP. However, they had to follow the majority of the all-member vote which was in favor of electoral politics: And, in hindsight, I find it nice that on the European level, the whole of Europe had made this decision, and the people in Germany live with this decision now, and they are putting it into practice. Although we would perhaps decide differently, it is also a sign that it [all-member votes] works and that it makes sense to vote on the European level. Because, as it was said before, sometimes there is a different mood in a country or region, and the rest says, why don’t you want to form an election group, go for it, as it happened now. And, yeah, that’s why… this was a decision that I think is very important to make on a European level. (German activist, Int. 30, p. 7)

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Not all assessments are negative. Beyond the challenges involving allmember votes, one activist highlights the positive experiences concerning the possibility to vote on, and get to know, issues that matter elsewhere: I only vote when I feel that I have something to contribute. [...] It is like the public of a microcosmos. There are certainly no more than a few thousand people that participate. Yes, these are humble beginnings, but one feels more connected. I have the feeling that the people in Belgrade and Bologna, they really do something where we are all a part of the ideal whole. (German activist, Int. 28, p. 10)

2.5.3 Information Overload Related to the question of voting, many activists complain about an information overload—they feel that they receive too much information about too many things, often only of local or national relevance: Yes, one gets an e-mail, vote about this or that, there is a link so one gets there directly if you are already logged in, and my computer knows it’s me, and then, I go directly there, and I can vote directly, and there are these candidates, and I can click on them. There are the short video clips where they explain why they are doing it, why they are suitable, there are some written materials. I can also write to them, or I can also google them. That is no problem. But there are so many elections, one cannot do it. That’s why I only vote when I am really interested and when I think there is an issue that needs to be decided about, and I have to vote then. Because one always needs half an hour or so to do that. (German activist, Int. 24, p. 11-12)

At the same time, the process of transnational coordination is understood as time-consuming and potentially complicated: For example, the group from Bologna has decided to do something about the freeing of Assange. And it is not enough to read the e-mail and find out what Bologna does, but the e-mail invites us to participate. That is something that

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we have not really managed yet, to say, ok, let’s meet maybe one or two times per month, and how pieces of information flow from the transnational level, the federal level, the local level and then back again. Also, how much of it can we actually take in and process? (German activist, Int. 28, p. 4)

2.5.4 Language Barriers Another important practical challenge has been the English language, which is dominant inside DiEM25. Among activists, knowledge of English varies, which influences their ability to engage in transnational cooperation: Yeah, definitely the language barrier, that is noticeable also at the conferences over and over again. The disadvantage is that when people are good at English, it is easy for them to express themselves and get their ideas across. That is, of course, a problem. (German activist, Int. 27, p. 5)

Moreover, translation work, mainly to distribute DiEM25’s agenda to a broader national constituency, is described as requiring significant resources: Difficulties…well, the language barrier is, of course, there. We need to translate texts quickly and well, et cetera. You need people for that, so when you want to work transnationally, it needs a lot of capacities. (German activist, Int. 30, p. 7)

Even in national contexts, some important documents may only be available in English. Also holding some meetings in English excludes those who do not master the language:

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In the Czech Republic there are mostly people in DiEM who understand English and are able to get involved through the English website, read English materials, or participate in discussions in English. We still have little translated into Czech, so for someone who does not speak foreign languages, information about DiEM is quite inaccessible. (Czech activist, Int. 7, p. 2) In Prague it’s just a few people who only speak English, and that’s a problem in the council, and I signed up there, and I didn’t know English that well, but there were foreigners who already take English as a universal language spoken everywhere. Today we are all cosmopolitan, intellectuals, and now what: will it [a document] be translated, or will two reports be made, one in English and the other in Czech? And these are things which just really complicate the whole process, just writing emails once in Czech and once in English. It just takes so much energy. (Czech activist, Int. 8, p. 4)

2.5.5 Personal Transnational Relationships Importantly, activists emphasize their positive experiences of transnational face-to-face cooperation. They especially appreciate the fostering of personal ties and gaining knowledge about other countries: When we are standing together on the street, this creates this connection that we need to work on in Europe. (German activist, Int. 29, p. 10)

Through face-to-face interactions, the transnational experience loses its often abstract character, and becomes embodied in personal relationships: For the people that are in the movement, there is also the personal relationship to it, the experiences that one has on the international level, the contacts one makes. If you are in a city in Europe, you can simply write to somebody, and

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you can talk about the state of Europe with them, and these experiences, they are also a driving force. So a lot of people like to be active in the movement, beyond [just supporting] this whole vision. (German activist, Int. 27, p. 11)

The experience of close relationships became even more tangible at the all-European summit in Prague: Prague was great because we could meet many DiEM people from the whole of Europe for the first time. We knew each other from Zoom calls, but other than that, we mostly dealt with the people in Germany. And to see that there were people from so many different countries and various age groups, and that they wanted to talk about the same topics in their countries and regions, that was cool. And about the Prague assembly itself, there were heated discussions, but at the same a lot of valuable exchange, and I would say, with Prague, it was the same as with other DiEM meetings: You go back with a lot of positive spirit because you feel encouraged. (German activist, Int. 30, p. 6)

Transnational interactions do not only support the formation of a European identity, but also increase knowledge about politics in other countries: One more thing is that, through DiEM, we automatically learn more about politics in other countries. We get to see what goes on in Greece in the parliament or follow what goes on... In France, we have first-hand information about the Yellow Vests, we get different insights into the politics of other countries. That is great. And that is already [European] integration. We also think about the other countries, it is important for us [to know about] what happens in Greece, what they do in France. We catch up on the other countries. (German activist, Int. 30, p. 10)

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Notwithstanding their strong support for ideational transnationalism, actual transnational cooperation clearly poses several perceived challenges for the interviewed DiEM25 activists. Among them, they list the abstract goals of the group, the demanding forms of democratic decision-making, including the extent of information provided through DiEM25’s communication channels, the required time capacity and expertise, and the necessary language skills. At the same time, if there is an opportunity for actual in-person meetings, these personal experiences make transnational cooperation more tangible and human-like, correcting its often abstract and detached character.

2.6

Conclusion

This chapter has underlined the contrast between the strong European identity of the interviewed DiEM25 activists—their ‘anti-nationalist Europeanism’—on the one hand and the perceived challenges of the concrete practices of transnational activism on the other. These observations may point to more general consequences for our understanding of the possibility of European civil society, or even active European citizenship, as imagined not only by the founding father of DiEM25, but by many other aficionados of transnationalism on the political left. Here we interpret the information gained from our interviews in the context of a broader debate on the possibilities of pan-European political cooperation and progressive politics. Due to the limited number of interviews we refrain from making broader comparisons (for this, see Scharenberg’s chapter in this volume). Nevertheless, one observation can be made: Although coming from two different political contexts, our interviewees demonstrated many similarities. Our interviewees seem to be aware of the fact that the opportunities provided by the institutional structure of the EU are not in themselves sufficient for a transnational movement to develop. Institutional political opportunities do not always translate into effective political mobilization. An important issue was the language barrier, which excludes those who do not master English. Beyond this very fundamental aspect, activists discussed the challenges of DiEM25’s European goals, the high demands

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of transnational democracy, and an information overload. At the same time, they cherished the importance of social interaction, which makes transnational cooperation tangible during personal encounters. However, social closeness is difficult to sustain in a transnational network mainly based on online means of communication. The difficulties of transnational action suggest that political activism remains to be shaped by domestic political and cultural conditions. These are still so heterogeneous that the creation of a common European space of broad and effective political participation can hardly be expected any time soon. This does not mean that there is no potential for the involvement of transnational platforms, social movements, and individuals in political activities at the European level. There are a number of important cases that prove this in addition to DiEM25. However, current experience suggests that the development of something like a European democratic transnational citizenship—or what Habermas (2003) has oddly called a ‘global domestic policy’—cannot be expected in the foreseeable future. Also DiEM25—so clearly addressing the EU polity—has not brought any perceptible change in this respect. Therefore, in the multilevel structure of today’s European politics, political activism can hardly be expected to realize radical-democratic visions (‘Europe from below’). At the transnational level, despite existing mechanisms and procedures, a narrow set of middle-class activists acts. Importantly, from time to time, they can help enforce—or prevent—an important regulation, bring an overlooked issue on the European agenda and force EU institutions to be more transparent. In this sense, they can push elements of liberal political culture and civic ethos beyond state borders, but they are not the bearers of a European popular sovereignty, the ‘European people’, as declared by DiEM25. In his work on the radical left, Luke March (2011) has identified internationalism as key element of (radical) left ideology. In contemporary European politics, the question of internationalism translates into views on European integration and the acceptance of EU membership. While radical left parties in Europe are divided over the issue (Dunphy and March 2013; Wagner 2021; Weisskircher 2019: 162f.), the umbrella

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group of the European Left advocates EU membership. DiEM25 clearly corresponds to this latter view. For political forces such as DiEM25 and the members of the European Left, with which DiEM25 has sometimes cooperated and sometimes competed, transnationalism poses challenges well beyond the difficulties of transnational political organization. Research on European integration has remained skeptical about whether the neoliberal trajectory of EU institutions can be reversed—emphasizing the huge majority requirements as a protective shield against the ‘social-democratization’ of the EU (Scharpf 1999). An overall focus on ‘Europe’ as the target, or even source, of progressive change may even be a discursive dead end for left-wing political actors (Streeck 2017). It remains to be seen whether DiEM25 or other ‘anti-nationalist Europeans’ will correct such skeptical assessments through their future transnational activism.

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3 Alter- Not Pro-European: The Question of Europe in Transnational Activist Networks Antje Scharenberg

3.1

Introduction: Europe Beyond the Brexit Binary

On the occasion of the Treaty of Rome’s 60th anniversary, two streams of protesters approach the Colosseum from opposite directions. As they merge in the spare shadow of Mediterranean pine trees standing nearby, it becomes obvious why they have not been marching together all along. From one side comes what may be summarised as the “progressive” bloc—a procession of red, white, rainbow and green colours (Illustration 3.1)—which is made up of a number of different groups and organisations: left-wing parties, local non-profit organisations, members of the European Green Party, members of the “Democracy in Europe Movement” DiEM25, protesters carrying Syriza flags, Italian anti-fascist movements, Kurdish solidarity protesters and a carnivalesque section A. Scharenberg (B) University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_3

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Illustration 3.1 “Progressive” protesters at 60th Anniversary marches, Rome, March 2017 (Source Author’s photo)

of dressed-up drummers walk alongside the members of the transnational civil society organisation European Alternatives from Rome, Paris, Berlin, London, Warsaw, Bologna, Gothenburg and elsewhere whom I have come to join. Our wider stream of protesters followed a call organised by a number of local organisations under the title La Nostra Europa: Unita, Democratica, Solidale (“Our Europe: United, Democratic, Solidarity”), coming together “to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in the full knowledge that we must change Europe” (European Alternatives 2017a, online). From the other side comes a blue and yellow bloc of protesters, excessively decorated with stars and European flags. While the progressive stream marches for a “Europe for all ”, they simply “March for Europe”, as the banners at the front of each procession summarise their respective core claims (emphasis added). This stream of protesters, which includes more established actors such as different MEPs and organisations like

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the Young European Federalists, expresses an explicitly pro-EU sentiment not only through their colours and flags, but also on the signs they carry (Illustration 3.2): “All EU needs is love”, “I heart EU” and “European Federation is European Revolution”. The abundant celebration of the terms “Europe” and “EU” in these protesters’ appearance is striking, compared to the “Europe for all” marchers’ more critical expressions. Here was a mode of “flagging” (Billig 1995, p. 5), in which the symbolic representation of Europe through EU flags and other “totem-like symbols” became “a kind of fetish” meant to have a community-creating function (Sassatelli 2002, p. 446). Importantly, however, yellow and blue—it appeared in this context— represented the colours of those who wanted to “protect Europe”, rather than change it. That is, yellow and blue were the colours of the status quo. Despite both marches merging towards the end, what was striking

Illustration 3.2 “Established” protesters at 60th anniversary marches, Rome, March 2017 (Source Author’s photo)

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to me was the near absence of yellow and blue, that is, the colours of EU flags and banners in the progressive stream of protesters. When I started working on the engaged ethnographic research project at Goldsmiths, University of London,1 from which the preceding vignette was taken, in the summer of 2016, the question of whether one was “pro-” or “anti-” European dominated the public discourse in Britain. Yet, while the UK’s EU referendum in June and the ongoing rise of far-right populism all across the continent made a study of how activists were seeking to change Europe from below particularly relevant, one of the things that I quickly realised was that the progressive activist networks I worked with did not neatly fit into the false binary of being for or against, “in” or “out” of the EU, a “Leaver” or a “Remainer”—as the clash of colours amongst “pro-European protesters” at the aforementioned 60th treaty anniversary protest in Rome began to illustrate. Rejecting populists’ xenophobic cries to “take back control” by retreating to the borders of nation-states, as well as the economic “scaremongering” (Douzinas 2017, p. 165) of the mainstream “Remain” campaign led by David Cameron, which essentially worked to maintain the neoliberal status quo, the activists I accompanied in the run up to and until years after the referendum held that both the UK and the EU needed to radically change. Working towards a “Europe for the many” (a nod to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour campaign slogan “For the many not the few”), they believed that Britain needed to stay in the Union, not least to protect a series of fundamental rights otherwise at risk under a Tory government. As the alter-European activists I worked with put it in one of their print publications: We want to open the often narrow discourse on the future of Europe and criticise the false dichotomy between nationalism on the one hand and a neoliberal version of Europe on the other. We still believe in a third

1

This ESRC-funded research project was conducted in collaboration with European Alternatives—a transnational network of more than 1000 individual members, grassroots activists and civil society organisations, with whom I already worked as an activist before entering the field as an engaged activist ethnographer, using participant observation, interviews and the analysis of key alternative media texts as primary methods of data collection. This chapter is an edited version of a chapter that has previously appeared in this context (see Scharenberg 2021).

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option: A Europe made by and for its citizens. (Büllesbach et al. 2017, p. 10)

In order to better understand this bottom-up approach to Europe, this chapter investigates alter-European activists’ complicated relationship with “Europe” by tracing different perspectives on Europe that may be found amongst the various actors in this network. Methodologically, the chapter draws on data collected throughout three years of engaged ethnographic research with alter-European activist networks, conducted between the UK’s vote to leave the EU in June 2016 and the European Parliament elections in May 2019. My access to these networks was granted through my previous engagement with alter-European activism, both as a member of the transnational civil society organisation European Alternatives and through my involvement with the aforementioned group Another Europe Is Possible, with whom I worked since the run-up to the UK’s EU referendum when we took to the streets of London to make the progressive “Remain” case. In the three years that followed, I have been active in these networks as both ethnographer and activist, inspired by a long tradition of engaged research, most notably the work of “militant” ethnographers like Jeffrey Juris (2008) or Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995). Thus, besides conducting thirty semi-structured interviews, analysing key alternative media texts and collecting data via participant observation at activist gatherings, protests and events in eighteen cities across and beyond EU-Europe—including on an caravan trip across the former Iron Curtain in the context of the Transeuropa Caravans campaign (see Scharenberg 2021, for an in-depth discussion, or Moskvina in this volume)—I also actively participated in the struggle at stake in numerous ways. Before discussing some of the findings that emerged from this engaged methodological approach, this chapter starts by situating contemporary alter-European activism within a wider history of how social movements have related to “Europe” in recent decades. Arguing that “(EU-)Europe” is often curiously absent from the movement, I move on to discussing six different types of actors and their orientations towards the idea of “Europe”, including the perspectives of (1) migrant citizens, (2) feminists, (3) greens and socialists, (4) Afro-Europeans and de-colonial

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activists, (5) Central and Eastern Europeans and (6) Mediterranean activists. Building on this data, I suggest that rather than taking a common idea of Europe as the starting point for their actions, what these different actors share is their desire to alter the European status quo in a variety of ways. More important than “Europe”, the chapter concludes, is the convergence of different struggles in a common quest for agency beyond borders.

3.2

Social Movements and (EU-)Europe: A Complicated Relationship

Transnational mobilisation in Europe is no new phenomenon. We might think, for instance, of the alliances made between “French ATTAC and Brazilian movement organizations, or between Italian and Spanish radicals and the Zapatistas”, which Flesher Fominaya and Cox see as “central to the construction of the ‘alter-globalization movement’” (2013, p. 1) around the turn of the century. Other examples of pan-European mobilisations include the peace movement’s efforts to transgress the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in bringing together activists from Eastern and Western European countries in the 1980s (Kaldor 2003); the emergence of pan-European marches, linking up protesters from different European countries to address unemployment on a European level in the 1990s (della Porta and Caiani 2009); or the transnational mobilisations of precarious workers in the early 2000s (Mattoni 2012). Despite this rich history of transnational mobilisations in Europe, European integration itself took place “largely without the participation of social movements” and was instead “spearheaded by political and economic elites” (Lahusen 2004, p. 55) in its early decades, treated as a matter of diplomatic and international relations. Thus, argue della Porta and Caiani, after decades of “permissive consensus” on various issues European, it was only in the beginning twenty-first century that “the involvement of civil society and social movement organizations in the debates on European integration” properly develops as a “new trend” (2009, p. 4)—a kind of “Europeanization from below” (p. 5).

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One of the striking findings of della Porta and Caiani’s study of the European Social Forums in the early 2000s, however, is that respective movements cannot be said to categorically be “pro-European”. Rather, discussing the degree of Euro-scepticism and Euro-criticism in the movement, della Porta and Caiani conclude that “[s]ocial movement attention to the EU does not automatically translate into either approval or disapproval, as support for Europe emerges as a polymorphous term that refers not only to different processes, but also to different ‘Europes’” (pp. 167– 168). Following the alter-globalisation movement’s World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001 and the movement’s broader critique of neoliberalism and globalisation, della Porta and Caiani argue that a key role of the European Social Forums during their meetings in Florence, Paris, London and Athens between 2002 and 2006 was to discuss precisely the limits of Europeanisation and call for “social justice and ‘democracy from below’” (p. 134). More than an ambiguous or sceptical relationship with the idea of Europe, some scholars even suggest that Europe is somewhat absent in more recent mobilisations. As Pianta and Gerbaudo argue, many of the anti-austerity protesters in the 2010s similarly saw “Europe” as the “culprit” (2015, p. 31) rather than as a possible space to create viable alternatives to austerity and neoliberalism, and thus abstained from addressing institutions on that level, mobilising instead primarily in a national context. They further found that “the lack of interest for Europe as a political space” derives from activists’ “scepticism towards the possibility of turning the European project towards progressive and equitable ends” (p. 32). In those movements, the notion of “Europe” typically featured as part of the problem rather than the solution (Kaldor and Selchow 2015). As Deel and Murray-Leach observed in their investigation of London-based mobilisations including Occupy, UK Uncut and the 2010 student protests, activists often took “Europe” to mean “EU”, while this “Europe-as-EU” was subsequently quickly criticised as “an agent of neo-liberalism” (2015, p. 191). Indeed, Europe, here, was found to be either “absent”, “irrelevant” (p. 196), or “invisible” (Kaldor and Selchow 2015, p. 2) in social movements’ politics. Situating my aforementioned anecdote of the 60th-anniversary protests in Rome into this wider context of how recent mobilisations have related to the idea of Europe, the absence of EU symbolism

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in the aforementioned “progressive” protest stream begins to appear less surprising, although it remained striking to me as a reoccurring phenomenon. Another example of clashing colours was the “left bloc” at one of the People’s March protests in London in October 2018, which brought together different groups of the UK left, including members of the Greens and the Labour Party, trade unions and migrants’ rights groups, taking up space within a broader sea of first-time protesters and more established groups wearing self-knitted yellow starred blue berets and carrying EU flags marching to Whitehall. By contrast, the left bloc’s red placards, flags and smoke bombs produced colourful media coverage without the slightest hint of yellow and blue (see Illustration 3.3). As I found out during one of the organising meetings in London a few months before, this effect was far from accidental. At that meeting, one organiser explicitly reminded people, only half-jokingly, to abstain from explicit modes of EU flagging: “Don’t bring too many EU flags”. Rather

Illustration 3.3 “Left bloc” protesters at People’s Vote March, London, October 2018 (Source Author’s photo)

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than Beethoven’s 9th symphony, by the end of the march, some of these protesters were singing The Internationale. Similar to Kaldor and Selchow’s (2015) study of subterranean politics in Europe, I also found “Europe” to be rather absent in many of the interviews I conducted. It was only when I transcribed one of my first interviews that I realised that the term “Europe” had not come up in forty-five minutes of conversation at all, although I explicitly asked interviewees about their political beliefs and their motivations for participating in respective activist networks. Instead of referring to their ideas about Europe, they tended to talk about a number of issues: about how they demonstrated against the war in Iraq, about the 2010 student protests in the UK, about the Spanish Indignados or the World Social Forums, about climate change, about Trump, Brexit and the threat of a rising far-right, racism and xenophobia, or about their lived experiences in relation to feminist and LGBTQ+ issues. Unprompted, many of my interviewees did not mention “Europe” at all. Where Europe did come up as a topic of conversation, some interviewees hesitantly related it to their personal experiences of having lived in different countries or talked about it in rather abstract terms, while others immediately encountered it with a straightforwardly critical stance. Étienne’s reaction was a typical example of the latter: You can easily label yourself as pro-European, but what does that fucking mean?... It makes no sense, because it doesn’t say what it works against or what it works for. (Étienne, November 2017)

Given that all organisations and groups I collaborated with carried Europe in their name—albeit often paired with qualifying additions such as “transform”, “restart”, “another” or “alternatives”, that is, a focus on how Europe might be altered —such remarks suggested a more complex relationship that seemed worth investigating further. In this chapter’s investigation of the role of Europe for contemporary alter-European activism, I take inspiration from Pleyers’ study on alterEuropean actors in the context of the anti-austerity mobilisations in the 2010s. Here, Pleyers identified a set of activist cultures and correspondingly different approaches to the role of “Europe” amongst activists. I

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adopt his “agency-centred perspective” (2015, p. 200) in my own analysis of contemporary alter-European activism, which Pleyers takes from the work of Touraine (for instance 1988), starting not from an assumed idea of European identity, but from the actors themselves. “An analytical outlook focussed on agency”, Pleyers suggests, “underlines that social movements and individual subjects are the actors of the transformation of society, notably through the way they contest and transform central cultural orientations” (2015, p. 201). As I will show, “progressive activists have a far less consensual opinion” than the mainstream media’s focus on “Europe as the primary space of action” or “the importance of the EU as a key actor” (p. 201) might imply. Indeed, what my engaged ethnographic approach reveals is not only that—rather than mobilising primarily around “Europe”—the actors in this movement are deeply situated in a variety of struggles 2 with correspondingly different perspectives on “Europe”. In the next section, I will introduce six progressive alterEuropean actors in more detail, discussing what motivates their actions and how—if at all—they relate to the idea of Europe.

3.3

Alter-European Actors’ Perspectives on Europe

3.3.1 Migrant Citizens’ Perspectives Amongst the crowd of protesters, I spotted a woman wrapped in an EU flag, barely protecting her from the London drizzle. When I asked her why she had come out on this day of action, which began with a mass lobby in parliament and ended with a rally on Trafalgar Square to demonstrate for EU citizens’ rights in the context of Britain’s ongoing divorce negotiations with the EU, Giulia, a UK resident from Italy, told me: 2 While Pleyers identifies “four cultures of activism across progressive activism in Europe” here (2015, p. 202, emphasis added), referring to activists’ different strategies and tactics, I prefer to focus on the different struggles present in alter-European activist networks in order to indicate that many of these actors’ actions connect with wider and longer-term issues and histories of struggle that are not necessarily born directly out of their engagement with “Europe”.

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…since I moved to the UK I feel more European… I guess the Brexit vote created new categories of people… [However, while] I do feel I’m European, I still think that the EU is a neoliberal institution, which needs to be challenged… Now, since the Brexit vote, I feel that voicing these opinions has become harder, because the EU is the institution that protects our rights… I am active in migrants’ rights, so I know much needs to change within the EU. However, as a European and as someone living in the UK, I have become part of a group that has the EU flag in its logo. I join them and wear yellow and blue clothes and this is not something I would usually do. (Fieldnotes, London, 13 September 2017)

Giulia’s ambiguous feelings about her own outfit summarise well how many in the movement who participate in alter-European activism due to an interest in or lived experiences of issues related to migration feel about Europe. On the one hand, Fortress Europe or the idea of European citizenship is seen as the problem in the sense that it primarily grants freedom of movement rights to EU nationals, thereby excluding non-EU citizens and “irregular migrants” (McNevin 2011). Others highlight how EU citizenship rights can be used to protect minorities, while holding at least the potential to be more inclusive than citizenship that is tied to the nation-state, due to its supranational constitution (for instance, Braidotti 2015). Moreover, within this already ambiguous relationship, different migrants’ experiences vary drastically, even between those who hold European citizenship. Two other protesters I meet on that day explain why: Feeling European depends on the part of Europe you are from. I’m not sure everyone [here] identifies as such. As a Romanian my experience was different to my German or French colleagues. I definitely felt like a migrant. (Fieldnotes, London, 13 September 2017) This is just the start of an erosion of rights. EU migrants are the target today, other migrants have been before and will be again in the future… Some of the groups that you don’t see represented when you talk about Brexit and the impact on them are the Roma, disabled, people who won’t be able to proof they’ve exercised treaty rights… Sexworkers, who are

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also working, but not in a legal industry… EU Nationals from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, who have left EU countries because of the racism and discrimination they faced… These are people that are all still missing from these discussions. (Fieldnotes, London, 13 September 2017)

While it is important to highlight such differences, Brexit also created an opportunity for campaigns that build alliances across different sets of actors. One campaign that arose in this context, called “Let Us Vote”, provides a good example of how activists were not only fighting for rights to be defended , but how political agency might be expanded to all mobile subjects in this context. Supported by a coalition of alterEuropean and migrants’ rights groups in the UK and on the European continent, including Another Europe Is Possible, a member of my collaborating organisation European Alternatives, the campaign demanded the right for all UK residents, regardless of which country they are from, to vote in national elections and referenda. This demand arose in the aftermath of the UK’s EU referendum, in which millions of mobile EU and UK citizens, who are some of the people most affected by this decision, did not have the right to vote. More than merely addressing this issue, however, the campaign raised broader questions regarding what happens to voting rights in the case of migration. Thus, importantly, the campaign does not perpetuate or set up hierarchies between EU nationals in the UK and British citizens abroad, or between different groups of migrants within the UK, but demands the right to vote for all residents in the UK, thus granting rights and political agency based on residency rather than nationality. Although the “mass lobby” and the “Let Us Vote” campaign are specific to the particular context in the UK, these actions illustrate how issues related to migration often play a crucial role in alter-European activism. This is not only because the paths of many alter-European activists I met throughout my time in the field have been shaped by some kind of migratory experience, either because they have family from or in different countries or because they have resided in different countries themselves. George—a European Alternatives spokesperson from the UK whom I met with at the mass lobby in London—has experienced both,

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having family who migrated from Italy and now living abroad himself. Besides sharing his own migration story, however, when he took the stage to give a speech at the mass lobby, he highlighted why issues related to migration matter more widely in the context of alter-European activism: What is happening today is not just about three million [EU citizens residing in the UK]… If we allow the government to take away these rights, we are undermining everybody’s rights to citizenship. (Fieldnotes, London, 13 September 2017)

What George pointed to in his speech is that, in the context of Brexit, it is not only EU citizens residing in the UK who are at risk of losing citizenship rights. Brexit also puts all British citizens, whether they migrate or not, at risk of losing rights tied to EU citizenship. For activists like George, such issues related to migration thus raise broader questions around the nation-bound nature of citizenship today.

3.3.2 Feminist Perspectives Maria, a Spanish activist in her mid-twenties, was one of the first people I interviewed. We met in her birth town of Madrid during the preparations of Transeuropa Festival in October 2017—one of the key events organised by European Alternatives, which brings together a variety of different progressive actors such as grassroots activists, artists, academics and radical municipal actors in a different city every other year. After I asked her why she got involved with European Alternatives, Maria explained to me that it is in feminism where her politics are rooted. Having grown sensitive to respective issues while growing up with a single mother in an all-female household has influenced her activism from a young age: I’ve always been doing activism or voluntary service… like helping homeless people. I was [also] helping the kids of a mother who was suffering domestic violence with homework. (Maria, October 2017)

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Other activists who explicitly identified as feminists talked about similar experiences of early politicisation through volunteering experiences or family members. I think I always had a sensitivity, because of my family upbringing. My family are quite political, my mum is a feminist… Then there was a feminist collective in my Uni that became my current group of comrades and friends and sisters – for more than ten years now. (Silvia, December 2017) My first memory of feeling political was as a girls scout as a kid…, deciding our school should have recycling programme… [My parents] did a lot of volunteer work but I don’t think they would have framed it as activism or even as being political. To me, as an adult, it is a political act. (Alexandria, November 2018)

Despite these references to lived experiences, feminist activists in the movement whom I interviewed also repeatedly linked their own activism to other struggles, pointing to how different issues intersect: [I like] this idea that what’s happening in feminist activism and migration activism feeds each other, it’s the same fights. What I’ve done on women’s rights is not separate from the migration side of my activism, it’s all linked. (Alexandria, November 2018) There are so many issues that I care passionately about. In my spare time I work on housing and domestic violence. I don’t think one issue really grabbed me, it was more about thinking what was happening around me. I actually think that all these things are interlinking. (Audrey, December 2018) My main interest kept being feminist organising, with the years with a queer lens… My politics… is to try and see the way in which differences of oppressions intersect, that is what intersectional organising is about. (Silvia, December 2017) [I]f we take down all our problems on this planet, it’s really related to patriarchy. What about patriarchy in the form of the priest, in the form

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of the imam, in the form of your father, in the form of no rights, in the form of social injustice, in the form of the military dictator, in the form of Thatcher? It’s patriarchy. (Habibah, August 2019)

Maria’s story embodies many of these different angles. In the interview, she explained to me that she always “wanted to work beyond borders” and told me about how this interest had taken her from Madrid, where she grew up and witnessed the uprising of the Indignados taking to the streets and occupying Puerta del Sol in 2011, as well as to the U.S. and Turkey, where she went as part of an Erasmus programme because she wanted to find out more about the intersections between Islam and feminism in the context of her interest in gender studies. Thus, when I asked her exactly why she got engaged in a transnational organisation like European Alternatives, she drew different aspects together, explaining that, for her, political agency can only be achieved across struggles and across borders: It was great to find an organisation like European Alternatives that was working on many different issues that I care about… It’s impossible to tackle the challenges that we have now from the national level… capitalism is doing that and it’s doing great, so we just need to find the same way of collaborating for the right cause beyond borders… If I have kids one day, I want them to know what is going on in the US, in South Africa, Ukraine, because there is no way back to that. We are so connected now, how can we be active citizens without surpassing the nation-state? It’s impossible. (Maria, October 2017)

Maria and other feminist activists’ understanding of agency thus takes into consideration both lived experiences as well as a wider critique of capitalism that is at once personal, intersectional and transnational. In other words, hers and others’ idea of agency here is not dissimilar from the idea of a “Feminism for the 99%” (Arruzza et al. 2019).

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3.3.3 Green and Socialist Perspectives Mark and I agreed to meet in a café near London’s Regents Street for an interview in December 2018 as this was where we wanted to join a Brexit-related anti-Tory march afterwards. In these last few years since the referendum, Mark had been working tirelessly, making the left case for “Remain”. From the perspective of the radical left, he argued, it was necessary to “remain and reform” the EU in order to address a series of social, economic and environmental issues. Indeed, Mark had been campaigning for some of these issues for years, as he told me with reference to his experience of the anti-Iraq war protests in 2003 and the alter-globalisation mobilisations: That was a period where you had a lot of initiatives, movements that were challenging neoliberalism in the Global South, injustices in international trade treaties and all of that kind of stuff… We did various different mobilisations there around a continuation of the anti-capitalism movement, so the European Social Forum was very important, that took place in London in 2004… The interesting comparison with today is that it was all extra parliamentary social movement stuff and the social movements were very big… but they didn’t have any impact on parliamentary politics... That was its limitation... you go to this great conference and you hear a lot of interesting ideas, but what is the outcome? (Mark, December 2018)

Antonio, who participated in the European Social Forum in Genoa, raised a similar point with regard to the political limitations of the alterglobalisation movement and “[t]he question of efficaciousness” (de Sousa Santos 2006, p. 184, original emphasis): [I]t’s not enough to have a talking shop. The only way that talk can not only influence policy by reaching the levels of power but also become a much wider conversation… is by competing for political power. In order to foster a space for debate you need to give that space a space of potentiality. (Antonio, October 2017)

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While Mark’s de facto campaigning efforts are directed more towards British MPs and the national political sphere, other activists like Antonio focus on building alliances across borders or influencing European institutions. Fabio, who is part of a pan-European mobilisation that campaigned and ran in the 2019 European elections around a “Green New Deal for Europe” (Klein 2019; GNDE 2019), focusses his efforts on building alliances between political actors from different countries: I interpreted my role in trying to connect the struggle of the Italian left and the struggle of the British left, trying to coordinate actions… We were in touch with the Labour assembly against austerity, we had a number of meetings with Labour people and people from Syriza, Podemos, the Italian left, the French socialist party and a few others. (Fabio, December 2018)

Despite these different approaches, both Mark and Fabio agree—with references to how their politics differ from those of the alter-globalisation movement—that (EU-)Europe can be a space for leveraging agency when it comes to addressing the contemporary issues they are fighting for: [We need] a left that can interpret the time that we live in, to find the right solutions for the problems that we face with the crisis of global capitalism. Those problems apply to the whole of Europe… Because, at the end of the day, British capitalism is very well connected to capital at the international level… You cannot do that just with the British government, you need the European Commission… Both in terms of economic inequality or environmental issues… we need to try and find ways to coordinate the actions at the European level… It’s a very different season for movements compared to the one we had 30 years ago, compared with the no global movement… [Of course] we need to fight for another world [but] I don’t think we can fight for another world if we don’t fight for another Europe. (Fabio, December 2018) “Another world is possible” is a great slogan from the World Social Forum… I am interested in problematising the notion of Europe… [because there is] a danger of being Eurocentric… On the other hand, Europe exists, and we should fight for another world in the institutions

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of Europe too... So yeah, “think global act regional”, to change the old slogan. (Mark, December 2018)

In other words, while highly critical of European institutions, both Fabio and Mark see the possibility of intervening in Europe’s established party-political frameworks as an important register of exercising agency beyond borders. Another important consideration that begins to surface in Mark’s comment, however, is how it might be possible to alter Europe without perpetuating Eurocentrism—a critique that several of my participants shared.

3.3.4 Afro-European and De-Colonial Perspectives Both James and I had come to Ukraine for the first time when we met at a funding event for European activists in Kiev in the spring of 2018. The two of us immediately bonded over a fascination with this city on the periphery of EU-Europe. Kiev’s complicated position between Russia and Europe ran through its architecture, ranging from pompous orthodox churches to brutalist buildings, but was also made visible by the soldiers and tanks we passed on the streets, reminding us of the conflict around Russia’ annexation of Crimea. During long walks through the city, we talked about photography, Labour Party politics, our local South London neighbourhood—where we both happened to live—and what it was like growing up in a tower block in a working-class household—him in the North of England, I in the East of Germany. James and I decided that the particular connection we felt with this city was our own experiences of growing up in-between worlds. In my case, having been born in a country that does not exist anymore (the GDR), it was the experience of growing up between East and West. James’ sense of in-betweenness on the other hand resulted from being born to a white British mother and an African American father. James was happy to share his experiences and analysis of racism in Europe. In fact, his activism revolved precisely around this—to connect and spread the perspectives of Afro-Europeans. On one walk near Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where a public exhibition reminded of the major pro-European and anti-corruption protests that

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had taken place here in 2014, James suddenly sprinted off. After briefly explaining something and handing a card to a passer-by, he came back over with a smile. Perhaps she wants to share her story, he explained to me. The young woman was one of the few other persons of colour we met on that day walking the streets of Kiev, and throughout the three-day activist workshop. For James, collecting, connecting, and telling the stories of AfroEuropeans and Europeans of colour was a matter of claiming back agency, ownership, and belonging to a continent which historically constructed itself against non-white and non-Christian “Others” (Hall 1991, 1992, 2002) and which still holds “nonwhiteness as nonEuropeanness” (El-Tayeb 2011, p. xxiv). As Pitts writes in Afropean: “My skin colour had disguised my Europeanness; ‘European’ was still being used a synonym for ‘white’” (2019, p. 3). Thus, the sharing of such stories can be understood as an expression of agency against the “colourblindness” which El-Tayeb attests Europe, a discourse which “claims not to “see” racialized difference” (2011, p. xxiv) and thereby externalises issues of racialisation, making it harder to confront Europe’s own brands of racism. Some activists I interviewed make a point of actively confronting this “colourblindness” by calling out respective inequalities or making connections to histories of colonial oppression: When you don’t see colour, your default option is white, when you don’t see gender, your default is cis gender male, so there has to be a conscious effort to work on that (Silvia, December 2017) Have you seen that banner where someone wrote “CO2 lonialism”, colonialism but using CO2 in there? So it was really making the links of which places are going to be impacted by climate change and are going to struggle most because of the lasting impacts of things like colonialism and inequality. (Audrey, December 2018)

Moreover, activists taking an explicitly anti-racist, anti-imperial, or decolonial stance highlighted the importance of not only drawing these conceptual links, but also organising respective actors’ across geographical borders. In a video interview recorded at Transeuropa Festival in

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Madrid in 2017, which collaborated with the local anti-racist collective “SOS Racismo”, a Danish Black Lives Matter activist speaks about how the festival enabled her to set up a collaboration with other activists based in the UK: We wish… to make a connection… so that we can strengthen each other throughout Europe. (European Alternatives 2017b, online)

Habibah, an activist who organises workshops with different migrants and refugees, pursues a similar strategy: We have done one in Gothenburg where we brought… refugees and newcomers together with locals. And we also did one in Jordan, with Egyptians and Jordanians and Swedes… What is it like to be born and raised in Sweden by migrant parents, where you don’t look blond? What does it do to you? What does it create? (Habibah, August 2019)

In the interview, Habibah highlighted the sense of empowerment that she and others felt throughout these workshops, where agency arose from the connection of actors across borders.

3.3.5 Central and Eastern European Perspectives Agnieszka and I met at a workshop that brought together activists from Central and Eastern Europe to tackle hate speech and far-right nationalism, which took place in the sunny hills of Florence in the summer of 2018. Our beautiful view of the Tuscan landscape was at odds with the darkening horizon in Italian politics. Italy’s new coalition government of the Cinque Stelle Movement and Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega had taken office only a few months before. One of Salvini’s first actions as Deputy Prime Minister was to close Italian harbours to the MS Aquarius, a boat with more than 600 refugees and migrants on board. Moreover, given Austria entering into a coalition government with the far-right FPÖ and increasingly hostile rhetoric against migrants creeping across the European continent, toxic nationalism was no longer merely an issue in PiS-governed Poland or Orbán’s Hungary.

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Despite these similarly grim conditions in different countries, however, one issue that several Central and Eastern European activists raised in interviews was a sense of ongoing belittlement by the West: [A]ctivism here [in Western Europe] is definitely something much more different than what I experienced in the Balkans… [There is] this very unfortunate feeling, as an Eastern European, [of ] having less value… It’s always this division between East and West, like the East is [full of ] savages [laughs]. (Šejla, March 2018)

This comment reflects what Hall wrote about Eastern Europe as one of the West’s “internal others” (1992, p. 188): the Eastern European region is “a boundary which has always given western Europe trouble… It stretches out to the Urals and beyond, into the dark unknown from which the barbarians descended” (1991, p. 18). This culturally constructed opposition between the supposedly “irrational and barbarous East” and the supposedly “‘rational’ and civilised West” (p. 18) has not only been perpetuated throughout European history, but has troubled activists until today (see also Kaldor and Selchow 2015). It drives Eastern activists to claim a sense of emancipation and agency vis-à-vis the dominant Western forces within the political European project. Rather than merely copying Western Europe in the context of a postcommunist transition, many activists highlighted the need to recognise the particularities and challenges that arise in their specific contexts: [T]he European Union is also often seen as a kind of dominator, manipulator, they tell us what to do. After the Soviets [were] telling us what to do, people say “we don’t want that, we have enough of people from the outside”… What’s problematic is that Western countries don’t often see that or recognise that the EU is not an ultimate value for Central and Eastern Europe… referring to EU is not appealing to people. (Agnieszka, June 2018) I was born [in what was then Czechoslovakia] in 1984… What we had there was a state capitalism, it had nothing to do with communism. But here communism or socialism is simply a word that you don’t use, it’s really a swearword… The society has been de-politicised so much after

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the transition to capitalism… The younger generation has a little bit more of a critical analysis of what happened before 1989, but now the elites, the political elites, they call us Neo-Marxists… it’s anti-leftist. (Ana, November 2018)

Thus, for Agnieszka and others, agency can be reclaimed through trans-European connections, including with Western countries, but in particular by making links across the region, allowing activists to strategise and think what can we do in our region, which is so diverse in itself. And also maybe embrace Western narratives, but also be critical towards them… For me, empowering and actually mobilising across the region has to be the starting point… European institutions are an important actor… but [they are also] perceived as “they will tell us what to do”. So, who will save us? We have to save ourselves! (Agnieszka, June 2018)

The workshop in Florence where we met, which focussed in particular on connecting activists across Central and Eastern Europe, was a good example of how this might work.

3.3.6 Mediterranean Perspectives After having met at several other activist gatherings before, Laura and I saw each other again in Palermo, where she works at a migrants’ rights organisation, at Transeuropa Festival in 2019. Before coming to Palermo, Laura—who is fluent in Arabic, French, Italian, and English—has lived in different places along the Mediterranean coastline. When I asked her about her relationship with Europe, she hesitated. I live in Europe, but it’s hard for me to say I’m European, because I feel more Mediterranean… People in the Mediterranean have really something in common… When you say you’re from the Mediterranean, like, as an Italian, when I was in Tunisia, people would say that “ok, we are brothers, we are brother and sister, because you’re Italian”. (Laura, May 2019)

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Laura is not the only activist I spoke to who connected strongly with this idea of a Mediterranean rather than a European identity. Indeed, Mediterranean activists I interviewed highlighted the links between Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. I often felt that I was Mediterranean rather than European, more in touch with Southern Europe and North Africa. (Fieldnotes, London, 13 September 2017) If you ask me what is my identity, I will tell you I’m an Arab, and then I’m a Mediterranean, Muslim… but Mediterranean is very important, a really really important part of my identity... I was in Greece this summer for a wedding, and when people ask me “where are you from?”, I say I’m from Alexandria. And they’re like “oh Alexandria!” Because when you say you’re from Alexandria, you’re kind of saying “Look! We have a lot in common!” (Habibah, August 2019)

The concept of a Mediterranean identity is not only something perceived by activists but has also been discussed by various scholars and historians (for instance Chambers 2008; Solera 2017). There is something about the Mediterranean view that disrupts Western-centric and Islamophobic understandings of Europe that draw Europe’s Southern border along the lines of religion or culture, constructing the notion of “internal” or “external others” along the Mediterranean’s shorelines (Hall 1992, p. 188), as some activists point out. Of course, the Mediterranean is also a colonial space (see Chambers 2008) as well as a space of ongoing cultural overlapping and exchange, even if, as one activist points out, contemporary xenophobic nationalists would like to forget about this: There was a language that was used in the ports in the Mediterranean. It’s called Sabir and it’s a mixture, a melange between Venetian dialect and Arabic, and dialect from Genova… there was such an exchange of food, of people, of thoughts for a very, very long time and I don’t think you can erase it… Now there is this huge Islamophobia that includes Arabs who are also not Muslim. (Laura, May 2019)

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Yet, it is not despite, but because of these complex contradictions and connections that a Mediterranean perspective might point to a different way of how agency may be built by connecting different actors translocally—as it is already practiced by activists in this network.

3.4

Towards a Convergence of Struggles Across Borders

What do the stories of Giulia, Maria, Mark, James, Agnieszka, Laura, and others tell us about the role of “Europe” in progressive alter-European activist networks? How do these six different actors and their different tales of Europe relate to each other, and what is their common ground for action? First of all, it is important to highlight that these six perspectives are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. Many of them in fact embody several of these modes of belonging and analysis at once. My aim here, rather than painting a comprehensive picture of all possible ways of relating to Europe, was to provide a sense of some of the key perspectives on Europe that can be found in progressive alter-European activism. In order to begin to make sense of this co-presence of different perspectives on Europe, it is important to highlight that contemporary alter-European activist networks are not the first to bring together actors from a variety of different struggles. For instance, della Porta speaks of “tolerant identities” in the context of the alter-globalisation movement, which derive “through a process of “contamination in action” (2005, p. 178, original emphasis). Della Porta further highlights tolerant identities’ “emphasis upon diversity and cross-fertilization, with limited identification” and observes that activists “develop especially around common campaigns on objects perceived as ‘concrete’ and nurtured by an ‘evangelical’ search for dialogue” (2005, p. 186). Starting from a similar reading of different actors present in Madrid-based autonomous collectives linked to the alter-globalisation movement, Flesher Fominaya (2010) highlights the role of the assembly as an important site of developing a shared set of narratives, relationships, and experiences. She holds

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that “the assembly is the core around which new projects are generated with important ramifications for the latent and visible moments of collective action and therefore the process of collective identity formation” (p. 397). At the same time, these processes taking place in the assembly also “reveal the tensions, contradictions, and negotiations in the latent moments that generate the seeming ‘unity’ of [the] movement in its visible moments of protest” (p. 398). I witnessed a good example of how respective tensions and negotiations play out in the context of contemporary alter-European activist networks as different understandings of Europe collided at an event which brought different actors together in Berlin in 2018, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 2008 global financial crisis. Here, a heated discussion unfolded between two panellists. One speaker highlighted the citizenship perspective, arguing that European citizenship, as a “multi-ethnic or multicultural entity bound together in a common legal framework”, might aid a sense of “institutional solidarity”, for instance in the shape of an equal Europe-wide unemployment scheme, which would address economic inequality and could benefit all European residents from Germany to Greece. For another speaker, who started from a de-colonial perspective, such proposals do not go far enough if they do not explicitly challenge Eurocentrism: Getting rid of the nation-state or having some big European republic, I don’t understand how this solves some of these problems around who belongs and who doesn’t. What we need to talk about and unpick here is this very idea of there being a European identity, Western civilization, which is entirely fabricated from empire… Why do we want to continue to reify Europe? …If we look at how the world is structured right now… what you see is that the developed world is giving aid to the developing world, based on the Euro-centric idea that the West has helped the rest of the world to progress, when all this progress came on the back of colonies. (Fieldnotes, Berlin, September 2018)

This discussion regarding the question of whether Europe might even be the right starting point for collective action is a typical example of ongoing disputes between activists’ different priorities. Yet, several activists I interviewed pointed out that they think the movement works

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at its best precisely where it makes space for such moments of contradictions, which they believe serve to inform future collective actions. Reflecting on a transnational training programme that brought together a diverse range of actors with different approaches to alter-European activism, two activists highlight the value of tensions and contradictions as follows: I learned from everyone, especially because we were so different… We wouldn’t normally have met, I don’t think, that group of people. Maybe if we all lived in the same city let’s say, we might have all been on the same protest, but I think we would have been doing different things on that protest, so I think it was really, really cool to get that group of people together in a room… to hear different opinions and to disagree, but respectfully have these conversations and understand that everyone had something to contribute. (Audrey, December 2018) You don’t all have to be in agreement, but you’re all engaging in contestation. You’re participating in constructing something. The danger is more when you stop engaging, then you’re not part of it anymore but as long as you’re engaging, even if it is in opposition to other activism in the same sphere, something is being made, something is transforming. (Alexandria, November 2018)

Thus, rather than starting from a predefined idea of Europe, progressive alter-European activism deliberately assembles a multiplicity of actors who sometimes hold conflicting and, at times, contradictory perspectives on “Europe”. That’s the value… building a space for convergence… In France, they have a nice word for it I haven’t found in English – convergences des lutes… I think we’re missing that, as activists if we’re not drawing on those linkages. (Alexandria, November 2018) …this partnership building has always been, I would say, a particularly strong point [of European Alternatives]…, to be able to go and put together coalitions of different actors… to build a polycentric organisation. (George, November 2017)

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From Fabio’s attempts “to connect the struggle of the Italian left and the struggle of the British left”, to Agnieszka’s belief in “mobilising across the region” or Silvia’s remark regarding the need to “see the way in which differences of oppressions intersect”, it is the convergence of different struggles and the need to make connections across national borders that runs through the six different perspectives on Europe, which I discussed in this chapter. More important than a predefined understanding of Europe, then, is alter-European activists’ willingness to build coalitions and find ways of acting that transgress both the borders of struggles and the borders of nation-states.

3.5

Conclusion: Alter-European Activism Beyond “Europe”

In sum, returning to my original question regarding the role of Europe for progressive alter-European activism, my argument in this chapter evolved in two steps. Firstly, I have shown that the activist networks I worked with in this study are better understood as alter- rather than as categorically pro-European. Rejecting populists’ supposedly binary choice between being either pro- or anti-European, progressive alterEuropean activism challenges both xenophobic nationalism and well as the neoliberal, European status quo. While individual activists in these networks may certainly feel or identify as European (see, for instance, Císaˇr and Weisskircher in this volume), (EU-)Europe continues to remain somewhat absent or at least problematic terrain for alterEuropean activists. Secondly, what my discussion of different takes on Europe that may be found in alter-European activist network reveals is that “Europe” functions not as an end in itself, but as that which is to be altered in different ways from the perspective of different struggles: towards another Europe that is, amongst others, pro-migration, pro-feminist, green, socialist, anti-austerity, anti-racist, decolonised, and bringing together people across geographical and cultural boundaries from East to West and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. More important than

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any predefined idea of Europe, here, is the convergence of different struggles across the borders of nation-states, working towards what I have elsewhere conceptualised as transversal agency (see Scharenberg 2021). To be sure, a convergence of struggles across borders is not without tensions. Besides conflicting views on the role of Europe, transnational organising comes with a variety of challenges, including not least the nation-centredness of mainstream media, funding infrastructures, and citizenship rights (see Scharenberg 2021 or Císaˇr and Weisskircher in this volume). Nevertheless, as campaigns like the European Green New Deal or the Let Us Vote coalition which I mentioned in this chapter illustrate, the convergence of struggles across borders has the potential to produce concrete suggestions for how Europe may be radically altered .

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Douzinas, C. (2017). Syriza in Power: Reflections of an Accidental Politician. Polity. El-Tayeb, F. (2011). European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. University of Minnesota Press. European Alternatives. (2017a). ‘On the road to Rome’, European Alternatives Blog, 21 February. Available at: https://euroalter.com/on-the-road-to-rome/. European Alternatives. (2017b). TRANSEUROPA Festival: Convergent Spaces (Final movie 2017)‚ 5 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RlQrn0X5q9A. Flesher Fominaya, C. (2010). Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates. Sociology Compass, 4 (6), 393–404. Flesher Fominaya, C., & Cox, L. (Eds.). (2013). Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Anti-Austerity Protest. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. GNDE, G. N. D. for E. (2019). The Green New Deal for Europe—Blueprint for Europe’s Just Transition (Edition II). Hall, S. (1991). ‘Europe’s Other Self ’, Marxism Today, August, pp. 18–19. Available at: http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/91_08_18.pdf. Hall, S. (1992). The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds.), Formations of Modernity: Vol. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction (pp. 184–227). Polity. Hall, S. (2002). ‘In But Not of Europe’: Europe and Its Myths. Soundings, 22, 57–69. Juris, J. S. (2008). Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization. Duke University Press. Kaldor, M. (2003). Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Polity. Kaldor, M., & Selchow, S. (Eds.). (2015). Subterranean Politics in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. Klein, N. (2019). On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal . Allen Lane. Lahusen, C. (2004). Joining the Cocktail Circuit: Social Movement Organizations at the European Union. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 9 (1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.9.1.l06w4m11367600w4. Mattoni, A. (2012). Media Practices and Protest Politics: How Precarious Workers Mobilise. Ashgate. McNevin, A. (2011). Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political . Columbia University Press. Pianta, M., & Gerbaudo, P. (2015). In Search of European Alternatives: Anti-Austerity Protests in Europe. In M. Kaldor & S. Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean Politics in Europe (pp. 31–59). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pitts, J. (2019). Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. Allen Lane. Pleyers, G. (2015). Alter-Europe: Progressive Activists and Europe. In M. Kaldor & S. Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean Politics in Europe (pp. 200–230). Palgrave Macmillan. Sassatelli, M. (2002). Imagined Europe: The Shaping of a European Cultural Identity Through EU Cultural Policy. European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (4), 435–451. Scharenberg, A. (2021). Transeuropa: Agency Beyond Borders in Alter-European Activist Networks [PhD thesis]. Goldsmiths, University of London. Available at: https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00030352. Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology,36 (3), 409–440. Solera, G. (2017). Citizen Activism and Mediterranean Identity: Beyond Eurocentrism. Springer International Publishing. Touraine, A. (1988). Return of the Actor: Social Theory in Postindustrial Society. University of Minnesota Press.

4 European Space in the Euroalternativist Discourse: Detachment, Utopia, Strategy, and a Life Story Yuliya Moskvina

4.1

Introduction

The economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the crisis of European integration that was made prominent by Brexit, the far-right backlash, the crisis of the European neoliberal order are among the many ways commonly used to describe the state of politics in the European Union today. The crises and the EU response raise questions about legitimate forms of EU governance, changing public opinion about the EU policymaking, and about the status of liberal values such as rule of law (Matthijs 2020). The crises gave birth to actors that previously were not so prominent in the political arena or were not there at all. Far-right populist parties in Germany, Italy, Greece, as well as the post-imperial British response Y. Moskvina (B) Charles University, Prague, Czechia e-mail: [email protected] Centre Français de Recherche en Sciences Sociales (CEFRES), Prague, Czechia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_4

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became a worrying sign for those academics and intellectuals concerned with the democratic path towards the European integration that the EU was supposed to take. Populism became one of the key words that describes the responses to the crisis, as well as the crisis of democracy itself. This chapter analyzes the reaction to the crises in the form of what is commonly referred to as transnational populism and Euroalternativism, in particular focussing on the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) and European Alternatives (EurAlt). These movements are significant in times of the above-described crises because they articulate a progressive vision for the European Union and propose ideas and practices that aim at its further reform, integration, and democratization. While they remain minor actors in the European political arena, they appear to be important carriers of alter-European ideas (for an anthropological elaboration on alter-Europeanism see Scharenberg, this volume). In this chapter, I explore how these movements create, justify, plan, and live through Europe as a multilayered poriferous space. I draw on the presupposition that the existence of public sphere has a spatial dimension. This is also the case for the European public sphere where ideas about the future of the EU are articulated. The European public sphere in such a manner is interconnected with Europe, be it as an imagined, planned, or lived space. While there is no agreement on the existence of this sphere, there are visible attempts to create it and to articulate Europe as a space. Inspired by the pragmatic sociology of critique, I approach European spatiality as a three-layered concept based on three formats of engagements. The first one—engagement in justification—considers plurality of orders of worth which are used to evaluate reality in the context of conflicting requirements to building commonality (Thévenot 2014). On this level, I show how activists and political philosophers connected to DiEM25 and EurAlt articulate a common good regarding the idea of the EU or Europe. On the second level— engagement with a plan, where social actors are involved in a political strategy—the spatial category of European space is used as a strategic means. This level of engagement also presupposes a strategy of involvement of citizens in the process of the creation of Europe. Finally, on the third level of engagement with familiarity, activists live through Europe as a commonplace while drawing on their cosmopolitan experience. On

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all these levels, European spatiality is different. On the level of justification, Europe is inhabited by a people who are a “constituent political power” (Balibar in De Cleen et al. 2020: 16) and has a universal character defined by human rights and fluid solidarity bonds (thus, the question of a common identity arises). As a plan or a future project, Europe is a matter of construction and involvement, it appears to be unknown and utopian. On this strategic level, the Euroalternativist movements build an infrastructure, develop European identity and a sense of belonging. Finally, a shared cosmopolitan experience reinforces engagement with Europe as a locus communis, however, this experience alone does not create a European public sphere either. Pragmatic sociology, as applied in this chapter, brings a further elaboration of the (im)possibility of the European public sphere from the point of the multilayered spatiality that Europe implies. The chapter is organized as follows: first, I briefly discuss the European public sphere and frame Euroalternativists as the actors that attempt to construct this sphere. Secondly, I present the main theoretical assumption of pragmatic sociology, namely the concept of engagement, and make an argument of why this type of analysis is suitable for the case at hand. I continue with three sections where I describe Europe as a common good, Europe as a plan or a project, and Europe as a space of affinity. I conclude in the last section. The data used in this chapter come from the project Transnational Populism and European Democracy.1 The data includes movements’ manifestos and other official documents (policy papers), as well as articles in the media and on the webpages of DiEM25 and EurAlt. 32 interviews were collected for this research project—with activists mainly in the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, but also activists from countries like Bulgaria and Romania, working on the transnational level.

1

The author acknowledges financial support for the research project Transnational populism and European democracy (TRAPpED), of the Czech Science Foundation (Grantová agentura ˇ Ceské republiky) (Standard Project 18-25924S).

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The European Public Sphere and Euroalternativists

In this chapter, I understand DiEM25 and European Alternatives as actors who participate in and simultaneously construct the European public sphere, where ideas of Euroscepticism and Euroalternativism clash. The European public sphere, following the definition of Habermas, could be defined as an arena for “the perception, identification, and treatment of problems affecting the whole society”, where collective identities circulate, discourses reinforcing self-understanding are articulated and problems are perceived and discussed (Habermas 1996: 301). While Habermas himself did not develop an analysis of the European public sphere, he emphasized its importance for overcoming the legitimacy deficit of the EU (Habermas 2001). However, the emergence of a unified European public sphere is highly problematic: a common language, shared identity and common infrastructure (media) do not exist (Auel and Tiemann 2020). Instead, the European public sphere is reconceptualized as “constituted by different interconnected arenas of public communication” with an emphasis on the “national, but connected and Europeanised, public spheres” [italics in orig.] (ibid.: 37). Moreover, as Císaˇr and Weisskircher, following Tarrow, discuss in this volume, the EU provides different opportunities for participation to the different types of actors, which reinforces the multiplicity of possible public inputs where different sets of political problems are discussed. The European dimension of DiEM25’s discourse is related to Europeanization from below and the creation of a counterpublic on the level of the EU (Agustín 2017) or to a progressive Euroalternativism—“prosystemic opposition towards the EU” (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020: 218) in opposition to pan-European Euroscepticism (Usherwood 2016). The latter implies that both national and transnational European politics are “interconnected via the referent object of … discourse, which in both cases is the Euroalternativist need to change the EU’s sedimented and unpopular practices of governance” (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020: 222). The Euroalternativist nature of DiEM25 political discourse situates it in the pan-European counterhegemonic bloc of anti-austerity movements struggling for coordinated transnational solidarity, democracy and

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popular sovereignty in the context of an expanded political opportunity structure (Marks and McAdam 1996; Scholl and Freyberg-Inan 2018). But while the European political space in terms of transnationalization of institutions becomes more homogenized (Kaiser and Starie 2005), in terms of the social unrest, Europe is an “internally differentiated movement space” (Flesher Fominaya and Cox 2013: 4). European anti-austerity movements still act in the national movement landscape and thus the EU or Europe does not appear to be a meaningful political space for resistance to neoliberalism, contrary to states (Flesher Fominaya and Cox 2013; Fominaya 2017; Pianta a Gerbaudo 2015; Gerbaudo 2017). Císaˇr and Weisskircher (in this volume) discuss the problematic aspects of transnational cooperation, which regard detachment of European issues from the concerns of the broader population, an overload of issues and information that must be processed, and the language barrier. While indeed the European transnational space might be problematic in these aspects, here I propose to look at its construction by the analytical means of pragmatic sociology, which brings insights into the euroalternativists’ perspectives rather than discussing the features of the European public sphere itself. The European space and public sphere become in this way a matter of different formats of humans’ engagement and each of the formats presupposes a particular type of imagination, action, and subjective feelings.

4.3

Methodological Tool of Pragmatic Sociology

The uncertainty of reality is the basic ontological assumption of pragmatic sociology (Boltanski 2011; Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Pragmatic sociology, developed in the 1980s in France by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, presupposes that it is doubt, but not certainty that lies at the core of human life (contrary to e.g. Wittgenstein who claimed that it is certainty that gives rise to doubt [Wittgenstein 1969]). Political actors are acting in conditions of constant uncertainty (to which we can refer as crisis) with the goal of stabilizing everything that is possible into

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what actually is. The European arena, with its different types of crises, presents such an environment of uncertainty: the legitimacy of its institutional foundations, values, and social actors is questioned, criticized, and re-established. What is specific to this process, and what I aim to emphasize in this chapter, are the operations by which social actors try to overcome the uncertainty of reality. These operations presuppose a difference between the realities with which the social actors are engaged. Following Boltanski and Thévenot, we can name three types of engagement: engagement in justification, where the common good is discussed; engagement in strategic action; and engagement in familiarity (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Thévenot 2007a, 2014, 2019). Engagement is a cognitive format by which reality is grasped, and information is understood as relevant to specific situations. The more general type of engagement regards critique and justification, with a reference to a common good that benefits all social actors. In this type, dispute and making compromises, in the context of plurality of forms of worth, play a key role (Thévenot 2014). Pragmatic sociology claims that there is a structural tension between social actors living together, and thus they use “grammars”—“a set of rules developed to reduce such tension” (Thévenot 2014: 9). The grammar of the orders of worth is necessarily public and the opinion of the audience or a third party is especially important. The legitimacy invoked by reference to one or another common good depends on the social conditions in which the dispute takes place—a common good is historically given, constructed, and assessed by wider society as a good for all. Boltanski and Thévenot refer to seven orders of worth which are based on seven modes of evaluation (worth), tests (how do the social actors test one or another’s worth?), forms of relevant proof (how do the actors prove that the worth is involved?), qualified objects and human beings (objects and humans that have or do not have worth), and finally, time and space formation. Based on the texts analyzed in this chapter, I emphasize the civic order of worth articulated by DiEM25 and EurAlt defending the common good of collective welfare, and by means of tests of solidarity and equality. The form of relevant truth that is specific to this order is formal and official. Qualified objects are rules, regulations, and laws, and qualified humans are equal citizens. Time is perennial, and the space formation is detached: the laws appear to be stable, long-lasting, universal, and independent from time and history. For example, human rights are understood as being possessed by every human with no regard to history or space. To

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cite the United Nations, their origin lies “in the nature of the human being itself, as articulated in all the world’s major religions and moral philosophy” (Viljoen 2012). The second grammar briefly mentioned in this chapter (mainly in connection with nationalist discourses) is the domestic order of worth that gives value to esteem and reputation while applying the test of trustworthiness. The form of relevant proof here is personal and exemplary. Qualified objects regard heritage and patrimony, and qualified human beings have authority given by a customary past (thus, migrants as newcomers are seen as not qualified in nationalist, right-wing discourses). Space formation is local, proximal, and anchoring. As Benedict Anderson claimed, the members of imagined communities of nations have images of their communion in their minds (Anderson 1991)—an articulated imagined continuity of shared time and proximity of space. The second format of engagement is engagement with a plan (Thévenot 2007b, 2014). This type of engagement presupposes strategic activity, and it takes into account a less uncertain reality than is the case of engagement in justification for a common good. As Thévenot puts it, in this format of engagement, the individual is capable of projecting herself into the future and reality appears to be an instrument by means of which a plan can be accomplished (Thévenot 2007b). Importantly, Thévenot speaks about an individual format of actions. However, the format of strategic action could also be applied to social movements, as Thévenot himself does (2014). To describe the strategy of DiEM25, some authors use the term transnational populism, drawing on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (De Cleen et al. 2020; Panayotu 2017). Chantal Mouffe describes the populist strategy as follows: “it is necessary to establish a political frontier and that left populism, understood as a discursive strategy of construction of the political frontier between ‘the people’ and ‘the oligarchy’, constitutes, in the present conjuncture, the type of politics needed to recover and deepen democracy” (Mouffe 2018: 11). To put aside critique of Mouffe and other post-foundational thinkers who blur the distinction between ontological and ontic levels of reality (Beveridge a Koch 2019), it is necessary to add that DiEM25 is not only populist, but also euroalternativist. DiEM25 and EurAlt create not only “the people”, but also “Europe”—both the actor and the space where the political agency appears. And creation of both categories might be analyzed as strategical actions.

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The third format of engagement is engagement in familiarity. It is based on the feeling of ease, affinity, and attachment with an environment. The grammar of personal affinities to common places is based on the familiar format of engagement (Thévenot 2014). This grammar does not presuppose detachment from the personal while being in public, it is a space where personhood is dialogized and intersubjectivity emerges in the course of communication. “In such a locus communis, various personal expressions find a common ground to communicate deep concerns, attachments and feelings” (Thévenot 2014: 20) [italics in orig.]. Thévenot stresses the importance of the affinity groups and the common places for social movements. He reminds us of the importance of such places using the examples of the communist parties in France and Italy: If we consider the historical periods of wide popular support of French and Italian Communist parties, in local politics in particular, we find a complex combination of this grammar with the egalitarian civic order of worth which was mainly put forward in discourses and slogans. Objects and arrangements which qualify for civic solidarity and equality of access, in cultural and social activities in particular, were associated with common-places that, in contrast to collective civic worth, foster the communication of personal attachments. The friendly, cheerful and festive ambiances nurtured by such communication were thus made compatible with qualification for the civic conception of the common good. (Thévenot 2014: 28) While Thévenot speaks about a cheerful and festive atmosphere of cooperation, in this chapter I propose to analyze places of a shared cosmopolitan experience of the transnational activists as common places and Euroalternativist movements as spaces where this experience is communicated. In such a manner, “deeply personal and emotional investments” (Thévenot 2014: 20) are connected to the shared European space which each of the activists lived through personally, while co-creating the very same space with others with the same experience.

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4.4

Engagement in Justification: Civic Order of Worth and Europe as Detached Space

Engagement in justification and critique, as it was mentioned before, serves as an operation of establishing certainty in conditions of ontologically uncertain reality. The European crises raise questions about the nature of the justification of Europe as a unified political space. While nationalists and Eurosceptics call for “less Europe” and refer to proximate and anchoring space of the nation-states, Euroalternativists articulate equality and solidarity between the European people and Europe as a detached space. The mode of evaluation involved in the civic order of worth is collective welfare and the tests of reality refer to the values of equality and solidarity. DiEM25 proposes the democratization of Europe through the creation of a European constitution and by extending the political powers of the European Parliament. The unity of the European people must be established while respecting cultural differences. In the DiEM25 Manifesto, the activists emphasize: “We come from every part of Europe and are united by different cultures, languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours, gender identities, faiths and conceptions of good society” (DiEM25 2016: 7). In his elaboration of the Progressive International—which appears to be a step forwards of DiEM25, after the failure to secure seats in the European Parliament in 2019— Varoufakis claims: “The plot which we should be following, namely building solidarity between people in the clasps of different types of pain, suffering and fear” (Varoufakis 2021). The creation of a chain of equivalences—the populist strategy—presupposes the basic understanding of equality between the components of the chain which DiEM25 articulates as “Europe’s people” (DiEM25 2016; for more on the DiEM25’s populism, see Panayotu, this volume). The equality between Europe’s people is based on four principles: no European people can be free as long as another democracy is violated, no European people can live in dignity as long as dignity is denied to others, no European people can live in prosperity as long as others are pushed into insolvency, and all European people must live in conditions of social welfare without putting the planet’s climate into risk (2016). The EU, according to the DiEM25,

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does not respect these principles, thus it does not pass the test of an institution that is able to guarantee equality between the European peoples. On the contrary, it reinforces the opposite. The technocratic nature of the EU and its inefficient institutional composition lead to inequality in terms of access to democracy, which becomes a derivative of economy. Democracy is a “luxury afforded to creditors while refused to debtors” (DiEM25 2016: 4). While the populist strategy brings an explanation of equivalence and antagonism, it is necessary to discuss the spatial dimension of both. The question is: what makes a European space being a relevant site of politics and what makes Europe’s people being united? According to the populist logic, this is an antagonistic relation to the common enemy—the technocratic EU establishment and the empty signifier of European people(s) as underdog (see Panayotu, this volume). However, here, I analyze the discourse of DiEM25 and EurAlt from the Euroalternativist perspective with an emphasis on equality and solidarity between Europeans that emerge in and simultaneously create Europe as a space of and for politics. Following the logic of the civic order of worth, the forms of relevant proofs are formal and official and the qualified objects serving to prove one’s argument are rules and regulations (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). In the transnational left-wing populist and Euroalternativist discourses of DiEM25 and EurAlt, the liberal idea of human rights, as the core principle of qualification of equality between humans, is what is essentially related to the EU. In the case of DiEM25, the EU appears to be “an exceptional achievement, bringing together in peace European peoples speaking different languages, submersed in different cultures, proving that it was possible to create a shared framework of human rights across a continent that was, not long ago, home to murderous chauvinism, racism and barbarity” (DiEM25 2016: 2). “Human rights” or “fundamental rights” appears 74 times in the Citizens’ Manifesto written by the activists of the European Alternatives. The Manifesto states, that these rights are the core values of the EU: “If we believe in democracy, freedom, the rule of law, equality and human rights as the Union’s fundamental values, enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on the EU, we cannot permit the creation of different categories and access to rights regimes, based on administrative and migration status” (European Alternatives 2013: 96). Human rights qualify humans as equal in the civic order of worth. The universality of human rights is their important characteristic, which

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also becomes the important characteristic of Europe, as Ivan, a DiEM25 member from the Czech Republic emphasizes: … if Europe loses universality, it will lose everything, it will lose itself. It means that all the people are equal, with no regard if they are Europeans or not … the concept of nation-state is not a fruitful concept, I see universal basic right as more important: … equality [and] freedom. While speaking about the human beings in the civic order, by means of which Euroalternativists justify Europe, it is important to make a distinction between equality and solidarity. Equality, as it was already mentioned, is expressed in formal categories of human rights, and other rights and norms such as labor rights, the rights of migrants and refugees, women’s rights, the freedom of movement. Human rights are understood as universal, and they refer to all human beings. Solidarity, on the other hand, reflects membership in a community. In his Plea for an AlterGlobalizing Europe, Etienne Balibar, a member of the Advisory Board of EurAlt, claims that there are two notions of citizenship and thus, two meanings that solidarity might have, based on local and global citizenship. These two meanings intertwine: To claim that politics can only be global does not equate to saying that politics is not concerned with the condition and the problems of “people” where they live, where their life history has placed them: on the contrary, it equates to asserting that local citizenship has as its condition an active global citizenship. Every local political choice of economic, social, cultural, institutional orientation involves a “cosmopolitan” choice, and vice versa. (Balibar 2007: 6) Besides this, other types of solidarity could be identified. One reflects the fluid nature of a cosmopolitan European society that, following Urry, might be called a society of flows (Urry 2010). In this line of thinking, Europe is “the signifier that our lives are neither local nor global, but rather intertwined in multiple webs of solidarity, similarities of circumstances and common interests that require collaboration and creativity” (Marsili and Milanese 2018: 55). In comparison with Balibar’s notion, this understanding of solidarity is less embedded in time and space and is

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related to “various global ‘networks and flows’ [that] undermine endogenous social structures” (Urry 2010: 348) where the “structures” might be defined as European spatiality. Another, more strategic type of solidarity is connected to establishing a self-rule of communities on multiple political scales: DiEM25 refers to the promotion of self-government on the local, municipal, regional, and transnational levels (DiEM25 2016). In the analyzed cases, equality between Europeans is based on a formal and universal notion of (human) rights and solidarity is based on post-national types of interconnectedness which might be layered and simultaneous, fluid, or embedded in multiple localities that become spaces for emancipation. Both types of worth raise the question of the particular nature of the European community that is bonded by it. When answering the question, why the European space has been chosen for his political endeavors, Miguel, a 37-year-old activist from EurAlt highlights the ambivalent detached spatially and cosmopolitan nature of the movement’s politics: But European Alternatives was never officially connected to the EU. We had [an] office in Romania before they joined the EU, we work in Serbia which is not in the EU nowadays and in Turkey, in Northern Africa. In the civic order of worth, the detached space formation has an ideal form of a State. Republics and democracies, as Boltanski and Thévenot claim, are the best forms of states because they ensure the representation of citizens united in electoral bodies, thanks to which “the general will can emanate from the base” (2006: 192). The discourses of Euroalternativist EurAlt and DiEM25 support this argument in their demand for EU democratization, expressed mainly in a stronger role for the European Parliament and the creation of a European constitution. They call for “[a] Democratic Europe in which all political authority stems from Europe’s sovereign people” (DiEM25 2016: 8). However, as it was discussed above, equality between the sovereign Europe’s people as well as newcomers is based on the universality of human rights, while solidarity ties are fluid and contingent. Do such bonds create the commonality necessary for the genesis of a European public sphere where the people create a collective identity, reinforce their self-understanding, and discuss common political problems? The EU clearly does not have the form of state in

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Boltanski and Thévenot’s sense. But in the discourse of the Euroalternativists, Europe does not appear to be justified as a political space either. On the contrary, it implies detachment from the location and unclear (dis)embeddedness of the solidarity bonds. As a space of universality and unbonded fluidity, “Europe” lacks justificaion and reasoning for becoming a shared space of politics to which Europeans feel attached as they are currently do towards singular, proximate and certain spatialities of neighbourhoods, cities or states.

4.5

Engagement in a Plan: Europe as a Space That Must Be Constructed Anew

4.5.1 Europe as a Future to Come As mentioned above, engagement in a plan relates to a less uncertain reality, which might be used instrumentally. While nationalism justifies the nation-state by means of a customary past and proximate spatiality, Euroalternativists speak about Europe as a future project. A brief comparison with right-wing populist discourses helps to explain this difference, which comes also through distinctions between conservative and progressive politics. Marie Le Pen puts together the history of the French revolution, Catholicism, and secularization: “The principles we fight for are engraved in our national motto: liberty, equality, fraternity. That stems from the principles of secularization resulting from a Christian heritage” (Le Pen in Green 2017). The leader of the Czech far-right nationalist party emphasized the role of national and regional traditions in the struggle against “political Islam”: “our civil weapon to fight against political Islam is our own politics of Christian, Czech and Moravian traditions…” (Okamura 2016). In both these examples, spatiality (of the state, region, or religious community) and time play an essential role in the justification of political thought. In terms of the justification of the EU to the general public, anti-nationalist pan-European movements are in a more uncertain position because they do not articulate the narrative formats of proofs justifying Europe as a home based on shared time and space (cursory references to peace and the welfare state might be found in these discourses, however they are far less rich than the discourses

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of nationalists or right-wing populists). On the contrary, Euroalternativists approach Europe as a spatial reality that could not be historically anchored or finally defined: … the story of Europa serves to remind us that from the beginning ‘Europe’ has been thought of as bigger than it is now typically understood as being, and that it exists at the crossroads of multiple paths. Europe, ultimately, is nowhere. Nowhere, of course, is also the etymology of the word ‘utopia’. And Europa – just like Utopia – is never found. (Marsili and Milanese 2018: 11) When criticizing nationalist discourse, Marsili and Milanese continue: “Going back to [the] future is impossible. … we need to invent new strategies and scales of action” (Marsili and Milanese 2018: 13). Euroalternativists are progressive: they present Europe as a plan, an alternative, a utopia that belongs to the future. Europe as a project is a call for the participation of the citizens in its creation. Admittedly, the name European Alternatives insinuates an alternative path of European development that could be taken in the future. Euroalternativist claim the need for urgent action to create “something new”: We need to act now against the rise of authoritarianism in the guise of right-wing populists. … And yet again, mere opposition is not enough, we cannot only engage in a politics of defense that is incapable of articulating something new, incapable of articulating the world we want to see. (Büllesbach 2017: 15) In this regard, Etienne Balibar writes about a “new politics of hope” which “must construct its forces, its goals, its language, entirely anew”, based on ideas of the federalism of diverse nations and their will and ability to collaborate (Balibar 2017: 24–25). The type of politics as Balibar claims is based on a lack of knowledge of the reality that Euroalternativists want to transform—it is not entirely clear (or justified) what Europe actually is. Instead of political unity, it is based on economic integration. This unclarity is reinforced by the narration of the past as a deviation from the original ideas of democracy and solidarity aspired in the Treaty of Maastricht and the narration of space as still based on the anchoring

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and proximate vision of nations, in which leaders hold tight to their “monopoly of representation” (Balibar 2017: 21). However, engagement with Europe as a project or a plan does not solve the question of the constitution of a meaningful European political space. Coming back to the topic of the public sphere, one must ask how engagement in a plan for Europe actually creates a European public sphere. In the next section, I explore strategies that are used by the Euroalternativists. Some of these strategies indeed support the thesis of the “national, but connected and Europeanised, public spheres” [italics in orig.] (Auel and Tiemann 2020: 37); others are however meant to construct a common identity of the European demos.

4.5.2 Modes of Strategical Engagement Engagement in a plan presupposes an active participation of citizens in the construction of a European future through visible, tangible means like a European football team instead of national teams, as one of the EurAlt activists Miguel emphasized during the interview. European Alternatives and DiEM25 create ways of citizens’ engagement in Europe-making on the transnational and on the Europeanized national levels. These engagements have a pragmatic goal—they attempt to create a tangibility of the future and the utopian Europe discussed in the previous section. After referring to a football team, Miguel continues: “the EU … lacked the public sphere … there is no demos without a public sphere and that is part of [what] European Alternatives was trying to create”. There are three main strategic actions: writing collective documents, including a European Constitution, reinforcing the identity of the European demos, collective events strengthening the sense of belonging (also connected to engagement with familiarity—the festive locus communis discussed in the following section), and personal participation in the institutional structures that are connected to the transnational level. Firstly, the collective writing of documents and manifestos reinforces European identity. The grassroots Citizens Manifesto was written in 2013 after a series of nearly 100 debates with European citizens. The Manifesto is called “Pragmatic Utopia” because it refers to a “Europe that is radically different from today’s” but is based on the analysis of Europe’s legislation

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and its power structure (Marsili and Milanese 2017: 65). The Manifesto is used as a means for construction of the European demos: When we developed the process that created the Citizens Manifesto, we proved that there is such a commonality, that there are the beginnings of a European demos, and that it is possible to engage and participate beyond borders. (Marsili and Milanese 2017: 65) A grassroots European constitution is another proposition of citizens’ engagement in the plan of Europe. Daria, an activist from a spontaneous collective in Prague, claims that the constitution is a means of construction of a European people rather than a proof of its existence: Our goal is a European constitution which will be created on the basis of participation of the highest possible number of people. We hope that this will unite people values-wise and economic-wise… so we can build lasting relationships, so Europe will acknowledge itself as Europe … Secondly, personal participation in transnational events taking place in different European cities bridges geographical distance and creates European unity. The Transeuropa caravans that took place before the elections in 2019 reached 38 cities in 15 countries, and were aiming at encouraging “democratic engagement and participation, especially among mobile EU citizens and other groups less likely to vote” (European Alternatives 2019: 2). While simultaneously promoting the freedom of movement, the goal of the caravans was to reinforce “a sense of European belonging and solidarity”, “to open people’s eyes to a broader vision of Europe and create links across borders” (European Alternatives 2020: 29). Building a sense of belonging is a strategic task: “This requires a multiplicity of different techniques, opportunities and places to make it possible to engage with people and plant messages about being European” (ibid.). Another event of this sort is the Transeuropa festival which is presented by the European Alternatives as “one of the longest-running transnational art and political festivals in Europe” (European Alternatives n.d.). The festival is attended by the artist, intellectuals, and activists and aims to create a network between those on the European level. However, while the Transeuropa festival might indeed strengthen a sense of belonging, its presentation,

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referring to the names of “renowned intellectuals” such as Saskia Sassen or Rosi Braidotti, suggests the high level of social and cultural capital that the participating organizations and visitors have. Finally, an organizational structure that connects local, municipal, regional, national, and transnational levels creates an institutional basis for European politics. The internal structure of DiEM25 has several levels. Firstly, it is a spontaneous collective that is organized by the local activists. DSCs’ [DiEM25 Spontaneous Collectives] main goal is to promote the ideas of DiEM25 described in the Manifesto or ongoing Campaigns, and organize actions that are allied to those. “DSCs embody the movement’s self-organizing dimension” (DiEM25 2020). They represent the practices of self-management and cooperatives and represent “spontaneously occurring horizontal structures” (ibid.). Horizonal self-organized DSCs are then connected vertically with the transnational Coordinating Collective that has a coordinating role and is involved in e.g. a fast response to events that require DiEM25’s reaction. The Transnational Advisory Council composed of intellectuals, activists, artists, etc. advises DiEM25 and facilitates the implementation of the movements’ aims. On the vertical level, municipal, regional, and national collectives might be formed in order to complement the organizational capacity of the local spontaneous collectives. This pan-European infrastructure, that involves different scopes of politics, serves as a structure through which problems are perceived and discussed, in a similar manner in different spaces, framed by the values of the DiEM25 Manifesto.

4.6

Engagement with Familiarity: Affinity to Common Place of Cosmopolitan Experience

Engagement with Europe as a familiar environment is related to the shared story of a fluid identity (to borrow from Urry [2010]). Those identities are either transnational or involve different layers of local, regional, national, transnational, European, or other identities. The experience of transnational self-understanding was mentioned by many activists— it is both subjective and shared. Such identities appear in the course of travelling and meeting strangers, having a migrant or mixed family

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background, or living on the borders. While those identities come from the activists’ personal experience, the events organized by EurAlt or DiEM25, the collective writing of documents, or the participation in the transnational institutions are ways of communicating this identity and of defining and developing an intersubjective transnational experience. The European or global space has a symbolic meaning for the generation that has been born after the fall of the Berlin wall: it became a space of attachment to the experience of border-crossing, as well as to cosmopolitan moral and political stances. Czech activist Pavel explains what being cosmopolitan means for him, based on the personal experience related to family and personal ties, language, and education: I would say that I am relatively bilingual person… I come from a bilingual family – my father is Slovak and my mother is Czech, so I would say it’s relative. … I am [cosmopolitan] thanks to education, internet, and [the] Erasmus program. I have a lot of friends from other countries, mainly the EU. There is a big community of expats in Prague, and I have a lot of friends who are expats from the West. This is how I understand [cosmopolitanism]. Miguel who talked about a European football team shares his experience, which is common for both EurAlt and DiEM25 activists: “What attracted me of European Alternatives was that they exactly matched my identity, aspiration and a sort of lack of points of reference. I was an Italian living in Britain, I previously lived in Spain and Canada, I was [a] transnational person in a world which was not”. This citation demonstrates the connection between personal identity and the European project that in the future will become an institutional reflection of transnational identities. Nowadays however this type of identity has no institutional comprehension—the title of Marsili and Milanese book Citizens from Nowhere reflects this void. Institutional development is always slower than lived experience and it is never able to fully grasp it (Boltanski 2011): this is also the case with how the transnational activists perceive the European space today. However, having a transnational or European identity does not lead to the loss of national or local identity. As Czech activist Afonso, who originally comes from Greece, emphasizes:

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I am proud to be Greek. … you can’t be just European, … just a citizen of the world. … I am also from the island of Crete, which is different from the rest of Greece … I am proud that Greeks, when migrants were coming, they opened their homes and the islands. … But at the same time, I am proud that Germans, or not the Germans but a lot of people in Germany, also opened their homes and welcomed migrants. … It makes me feel German in a way, and European.

4.7

Conclusion

In this chapter, I explored how transnational Euroalternativist movements (the Democracy in Europe Movement and European Alternatives) justify, plan, or live through Europe as a space. Pragmatic sociology provides an analytical apparatus that enables drawing a distinction between three types of spaces that are given by the formats of engagement with reality. These three types of engagement could be also seen in relation to politics (though, importantly, the distinction between them is not clear-cut). On the first level, of engagement with justification, there are discourses and values that justify European integration and define Europe as a unified but detached political space. Europe and the EU are justified by means of the civic order of worth, as being “an exceptional achievement” that brought peace to the continent (DiEM25 2016: 2). Europe is justified as a space where human rights qualify all persons including migrants as equal and where solidarity refers to membership in different types of communities (rather than being limited to a nation-state). These communities might be a fluid entwinement between the local and the global, layered and simultaneous as Balibar proposes, or they might serve rather as a strategic site of self-rule. The level of engagement in a plan of making Europe represents the strategic side of politics. Activists and political philosophers propose a progressive idea of re-creation of Europe and present European space as being a project in which citizens might participate. There are several strategies of participation in the European project. The first one is related to the creation of an identity (European

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demos), through political manifestos and other documents that articulate values. The second is participation in events that reinforce a sense of belonging to the community of Euroalternativists and thus to the idea of an alternative Europe as such. Finally, there is a porous infrastructure that enables participation on the interconnected local, municipal, regional, national, and European levels. This structure reinforces shared framings of political problems and discourses given by the mutual frame of the DiEM25 Manifesto or other documents that provide guidelines for political thinking. The third level of engagement with familiarity reflects the experiences of subjects—identities, life stories, encounters, events. The experience of a fluid identity (either transnational or multilayered) creates, defines, and develops intersubjective transnational experience. On this level of personal involvement, the self-understanding of subjects as Europeans appears. Space is important for the existence of the public sphere. Be it imagined or actual space, it gives frames for the actors’ actions, discourses, problems, and solutions. Coming back to Habermas’ definition of the public sphere and the impossibility of a European public sphere, one must consider that the space that underlines this public sphere is not unified, but multilayered and is related to the format of humans’ engagement with reality. Ontologically it means multiplicity of qualitatively different realities (e.g. in terms of the level of abstraction) in which European political space appears. Ontically, it means a need to overcome disursive, strategical and subjective limitations that “Europe” implies. Indeed, it is hard to justify Europe’s spatiality based on universality and detachment, especially with regard to the need to create certainties and points of reference in an uncertain world. However, even while proposing a utopian vision of Europe, it is possible to undertake strategic actions that lead to the genesis of European identity (or demos), frame problems as European rather than national, and promote the self-understanding of political subjects in European or transnational terms. These strategical steps of writing documents that state and clarify values, of making events that connect different localities and of building a transnational infrastructure that does not lose its relation to local politics are the key strategic points for the creation of a European space. Thus, this is also the strategy that reinforces the genesis of a European public sphere.

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Moreover, as the experience of the DiEM25 and EurAlt activists shows, these strategic actions might intertwine with the personal stories of Europeans. However, at this point, it is important to note the risks of the cosmopolitan experiences that might be limited to those of people with high cultural, social, and economic capital. The strategies of realizing the vision of a future Europe must include not only artists, activists, and intellectuals, but also those who usually do not have a voice—migrant workers, refugees, and all others who became “cosmopolitans” out of necessity. In the cases selected for this study, the formation of European intersubjectivity does not include these unvoluntary cosmopolitans who can benefit the most from the transnational equality and solidarity in a form of equal pay, protection of labour, existance of transnational trade unions or other solidarity networks. At the same time, they appear to be singularities that challange the justificaion of Europe by its univesality and put in question a joyful interplay between detachment and attachment to spaces. Such an inclusion must be based on empowerment in a sense that those who have no part are not included passively as topics of critical discussions during artistic events but become autors of the documents, organizors of events and active members of instrastructre. (This point also concerns the matter of language barriers that must be addressed and that is pointed out by Císaˇr and Weisskircher, this volume.) They must be included as those who actively participate in imagining, make strategical decisions, and experience-sharing of exclusion and displacement which represent the reverse side of what we comprehend as “cosmopolitanism”. Only through this presence of subjective, strategical and justificatory components defined by the groups of different classes and statuses, Europe might appear as a shared space definitive for the European public sphere.

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Part II Transnational Left Populism

5 Transnational Populism and the European Union: An Uneasy Alliance? The Case of DiEM25 Panos Panayotu

5.1

Introduction

By the mid-2010s it became fashionable to declare populism the most significant threat to democracy and the future of European integration. From the outset of the so-called Eurozone crisis top European officials at every opportunity have been denouncing populism as ‘the greatest danger to Europe’ (Van Rompuy in Stabenow 2010; see also Barroso in Cendrowicz 2012), a ‘poison’ (Merkel quoted in Martin 2018) and something ‘we must guard against’ (Juncker 2016). This opinion has been shared by prominent journalistic circles that usually portray populism as essentially anti-European aspiring to kill the EU (e.g., The Inquiry BBC 2019). Mainstream academic discourse has not escaped this tendency either. Take, for instance, Stefano Bartolini who long before the COVID-19 era utilized the medical terminology that became part of P. Panayotu (B) Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_5

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our everyday lives in 2020 and as an epidemiologist warned us against the ‘populist virus’ that infects Europe and spreads its ‘epidemic effects’ (2011: 9). And yet, the verdict is not unanimous. Etienne Balibar in the beginning of the crisis, in 2010, maintained that ‘Europe is a dead political project’ and in order to bring it back to life ‘we need something like a European populism’ (2010). Chantal Mouffe has also repeatedly argued for the need of a left-wing populism that will fight ‘for a democratic refoundation of Europe’ (2016, 2018). So, what is populism? Is it really a threat to democracy and the European Union or a chance for the rebirth of Europe’s democratic politics? There is no single answer here as not all types of populism are identical. The preceding declaration of populism as a threat refers primarily to a nativist, xenophobic and Eurosceptic extreme right that might either intent to tear the EU apart or reform it in its own exclusionary and authoritarian image (see Mudde 2019). Of course, one is legitimate to question the use of the term ‘populism’ to analyze this party family and we will return to this in the following section (see Stavrakakis 2013: 25–39). A left-wing, progressive, populism, by contrast, might call for a Europe of ‘the people’ by seeking to facilitate the EU’s radical democratization. Indeed, if we examine the two most paradigmatic cases of left-wing populism in Europe, that is Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece (see Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis 2018: 201), we will see that neither of them have been anti-EU; they have been critical of the EU of austerity policies that they perceived as ‘the buriers of the European project’ (Iglesias 2016 quoted in Roch 2020) but at the same time they were willing to work towards a ‘democratic, socially cohesive and free Europe’ (Tsipras 2013: 16). Populism, therefore, can be both a threat and a corrective (see Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012) to the European project and democracy itself. My aim in this chapter is to build upon this view and explore the possibilities of populism in transforming the EU towards a more democratic direction. More precisely, I am interested in examining the potentials of expanding populism from the national to the transnational level by taking the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) as a case study. Can DiEM25 be considered as a transnational populist force, and if so, how this may affect Europe’s democratic politics in terms

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of expanding party politics on the pan-European level and advancing the formation of a pan-European collective identity? In order to answer these questions I utilize the theoretical and methodological framework of the so-called Essex School (Laclau 2005a, 2005b; Stavrakakis 2017) and I analyze DiEM25’s discourse including manifestoes, speeches and published interviews of its key figures, press releases, campaigns and open letters to shed light on the identity, organization and programmatic principles of the movement. In what follows, I will begin by clarifying my theoretical understanding of transnational populism suggesting that Laclau’s discursive approach offers the safest theoretical path that allows us to see populism in its transnational light. Then, I will examine how a progressive transnational populism could advance the European Union from a theoretical point of view. In the next sections, I will turn my attention to DiEM25 by exploring the context of its emergence, outlining its main characteristics and analyzing whether its discourse constitutes a populist one that escapes national boundaries and can potentially be perceived as an example for a new type of populism on the transnational level. My concluding remarks reflect on what DiEM25 reveals about the potentials of transnationalizing EU politics.

5.2

Transnational Populism: A Theoretical Approach

Despite the growing interest in the different types of populism, transnational populism still remains under-researched and very often is being perceived as a contradiction in terms. Indeed, some scholars conceive of the national(ist) dimension as an inherent part of every populist discourse and they maintain that populism can only be ‘national populism’ (see Pantazopoulos 2016; Germany 1978) or even that populism is a particular ‘kind of nationalism’ (Stewart 1969: 183; see also Taggart 2000: 95–96) as they equate ‘the people’ with ‘the nation’. The first step towards envisaging a transnational type of populism is to break decisively with the deterministic identification of populism with

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nationalism [and nativism]. Moreover, so that to think about the connection of populism and transnationalism, one must be specific about the criteria of defining both of them. The starting point of my conceptualization of transnational populism is to locate myself in the discursive, formal, approach that perceives populism as a political logic characterized by the discursive construction of a popular subjectivity, that is a ‘we, the people’ and its opposite, that is a ‘they, the establishment’ (Laclau 2005a: 39; see Panayotu 2017: 5– 6). Vital features that mark populism from this point of view are: ‘the dichotomic construction of the social around an internal frontier’ that separates ‘the people’ from the power block (Laclau 2005b: 38, 74); the formation of a chain of equivalence between unsatisfied demands expressed by heterogeneous social actors that are united due to their common opposition to an unresponsive elite (Laclau 2005a: 37; Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis 2019: 8); and the production of ‘empty signifiers’, these can be slogans, concepts or even the name(s) of (a) leader(s) that partially lose their specific content and can be presented as universal and as such they provide coherence to the chain of equivalence while at the same time ‘keeping it […] open’ (Laclau 1996: 57–58; 2005a: 44). Scholars working with this framework usually adopt the operationalization of Laclau’s theory by Yannis Stavrakakis and the Populismus team that suggest two minimal criteria of a populist discourse: (1) ‘the people’ (or equivalent names such as ‘the many’, the 99% etc.) is the central reference, the nodal point, and (2) the antagonistic opposition between ‘the people’ and the elite(s)/the establishment/the oligarchy (or equivalent names such as ‘the few’, the 1% etc.) (see Populismus 2014: 18–19; Stavrakakis 2017). The formal aspect of this tradition and the detachment from particular site-specific, ideological or any other content are of great importance as they enable one to see that populism can be many different and even antithetical things. Now, another point that we are obliged to consider is that ‘the people’ in a populist discourse operates as an empty signifier (Stavrakakis et al. 2017: 425; De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017: 314). This means that it is not enough to have ‘the people’ as a core reference, we also need to examine how this signifier is constructed. Even if, for example, ‘the people’ is the nodal point of a given discourse but this signifier clearly

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loses its emptiness and identifies with the nation understood in ethnical terms, or race, or class, then populism might not be the right theoretical tool to analyze this discourse. To put it bluntly, not all antagonistic politics equal populism. Populism is just one way of constructing the usversus-them antagonism where ‘the people’ is depicted as the powerless underdogs, the marginalized, the un/underprivileged opposing an illegitimate, powerful elite that stopped being responsive to grievances and socio-economic needs of the first group. This brings us to the necessary conceptual distinction between populism and nationalism. In the latter ‘the people’ is understood as a homogeneous nation or ethnic group. It does not function as an empty signifier, but rather as what Derrida calls a transcendental signified (2005: 354), ‘attempting to fix signification once and for all’ (Stavrakakis et al. 2017: 425). Of course, at this point one could remind us that there are different ways of understanding the nation itself. Consider the contrast between the ethnic nation and the political nation: on the first occasion ‘the people’ is considered as ethnos or ‘communal identity’, while on the second ‘the people’ is taken as demos or ‘constituent political power’ (Balibar 2004: 157). On this basis we can have different types of nationalism: exclusionary and reactionary nationalisms but also more inclusionary and progressive ones. Understanding the nation in political terms might also open the possibility of queering the people-as-nation and even imagining a ‘transnation’ (Devenney 2020: 92). This could lead to a more heterogeneous conception of ‘the people’, one that is closer to a populist discourse. Coming to the other side of antagonism, the ‘enemy’ of a nationalist discourse is the non-members, the foreigners, other nations and other ethnically defined peoples (De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017: 309) and/or an elite that supports these groups. Besides, in the case of nationalism there is an emphasis on territoriality (see Grosby 2005: 10–12), whereas in populism there is no need for such an emphasis. As De Cleen and Stavrakakis crucially note, while a nationalist discourse is structured around a horizontal in/out dimension on the basis of national membership, a populist discourse is defined by a vertical bottom/up antagonism on the basis of power and socio-economic position (2017: 312).

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Distinguishing populism from nationalism does not exclude the possibility of those two being articulated in a single discourse. Undoubtedly, in practice the populist vertical and the nationalist horizontal dimensions might overlap in various ways. After all, the populist construction of ‘the people’ usually takes place within national contexts (see Anastasiou 2019), simply because we still leave in a banal ‘world of nations’ (see Billig 1995). What it excludes though is the essentialist identification of those two phenomena. Populism is not always and by definition nationalism or vice versa. Neither ‘the people’ is always and by definition the national people. This assertion allows us to imagine populism engaging at various levels- from national to local and from there to international, transnational or even post-national levels. This takes us to the meaning of the prefix ‘trans’ in transnational as opposed to the inter- and post- prefixes. Although there are differences in the way they locate the nation, these prefices are very often used interchangeably. To be more specific, the international model entails a collaboration between different nation-states, between national governments or national parties/movements. An example here would be the so-called Europarties that are in fact alliances of national parties that focus merely on a flexible collaboration (De Cleen 2017: 355), resulting in a reproduction of national politics without the possibility and the willingness to move beyond this context. A post-national discourse, for its part, would isolate the moment of the beyond the nation-states entailing a process of fading of, or even negating, national identities and the nation-state itself (see Appadurai 1996: 169). Transnational, in my view, articulates those two moments; it means between but also beyond the nation-states, involving the construction of a popular identity (see De Cleen et al. 2019; De Cleen 2017; Moffitt 2017), a ‘we’ that while it moves beyond the national borders, it does not aim to replace national identities but rather to supplement them. Having said that, transnational populism should not be confused with a post-national one attempting to ‘construct a homogeneous, postnational “we” through which the diversity of national “we” would be overcome’ (Mouffe 2013: 49). Neither should it be conflated with an international populism which stays in a loose cooperation between national populisms representing national peoples without a sense of

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a common identity (De Cleen et al. 2019: 8). Put differently, while both inter—and post-national populisms assume a single common identity—national in one case, post-national in the other—a transnational populism entails ‘a people’ that is perceived as a plural subject. With this in mind, and drawing upon my collaborative paper with Benjamin De Cleen, Benjamin Moffitt and Yannis Stavrakakis, transnational populism is defined as a dichotomic discourse in which ‘the transnational people’ are juxtaposed to ‘the elite’ along the lines of a down/up antagonism in which ‘the transnational people’ is discursively constructed as a large powerless group through opposition to ‘the elite’ conceived as a small and illegitimately powerful group. (De Cleen et al. 2019: 8)

As we have seen transnational populism is feasible from a theoretical perspective. Laclau’s formal approach where the whole point is to think of populism as a discursive logic leads itself to the idea of transnational populism, and in fact of any kind of populism, due to its disconnection from particular contents. This demonstrates that populism is not necessarily connected to the national dimension. In a different vein, mainstream perceptions argue that ‘populism favors mono-culturalism over multiculturalism, national self-interest over international cooperation and development aid, closed borders over the free flow of peoples, ideas, labor and capital, and traditionalism over progressive and liberal social values’ (Inglehart and Norris 2016: 7). Setting aside the fact that if we use the analytical tools of the Essex School what has just described as populism, might have little or even nothing to do with populism, the anti-essentialist discursive approach helps us escape from deterministic impasses that see the phenomenon in question as the antithesis of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and anything else that goes beyond the national boundaries, and hence as something that jeopardizes the European project. As indicated, not only can populism and transnationalism go together, but also a pan-European, transnational, populism can be a chance for the reinvigoration of Europe’s democratic politics (see Balibar 2010).

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Transnational Populism and How it Can Advance the European Project

Transnational populism can benefit European democracy in two ways. The first one concerns the construction of a transnational people, a panEuropean identity, or in fact, of transnational peoples and pan-European identities. As it is known, a crucial aspect of the EU’s democratic deficit is the no-demos thesis (Weiler 1995). If there is no European demos, according to that view, there can be no European democracy. European identity is undoubtedly ‘an issue of perennial concern for the EU institutions’, and yet one that remains an ‘unfinished business’ (Miller 2012: 7). Some scholars have attributed this failure to the lack of homogeneity on the European level, an assertion that is based on the premise that democracy requires a homogenous demos (see Pérez 2013: 23–26; Bellamy and Castiglione 2013: 218–219). However, Innerarity has rightly questioned this idea as ‘historically false and empirically untrue’ (2014: 4). As a matter of fact, a demos can be unified without being ethno-culturally homogeneous (Innerarity 2014: 10–13; Grimm 1995: 297). This debate occupies centre stage in the study of populism as well (see Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis 2019: 23; Katsambekis 2020). The ideational approach stresses the essential homogenous character of ‘the people’ (Mudde 2004; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017), while the discursive one highlights the heterogeneity of ‘the people’, who, nevertheless, are united through the chain of equivalence and their shared opposition to an establishment—but this unification does not eliminate diversity (Katsambekis 2020). Back to the lack of a strong European identity, other scholars highlight the dimension of affect, maintaining that it is the strong libidinal investment in the national forms of identification that makes the construction of a transnational collective identity a challenging task (see e.g., Stavrakakis 2007: 191–207). As such, the construction of a transnational people is ‘[…] far more diffuse, open and unfamiliar’ (Moffitt 2017: 416). The question, then, is how to forge affective bonds over and across national borders. A transnational, progressive, populism‚ or conflicting transnational populisms, can play a decisive role here by creating a political frontier between ‘us’ and ‘them’. More precisely, such a project could

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theoretically bring Europeans together around a project of hope on the basis of the democratic deficit and the demand of democratization of the EU institutions. Put differently, the identification with pan-European opposing camps and the participation in pan-European struggles can unite people across borders and generate transnational collective identities providing the basis upon which a European demos or more precisely, opposing European demoï could emerge (see Katsambekis and Panayotu 2019). This leads us to the second point that has to do with the fact that transnational populist [and non-populist] forces could increase public contestation over alternative policy options on the EU level. The lack of an actual European-level contestation is another important element of the EU’s democratic deficit (Follesdal and Hix 2006: 545). Although the Eurozone crisis turned the EU into a much-debated political topic (see Kratochvíl and Zdenˇek 2019: 176; Hutter and Kriesi 2019), it also proved that politicization does not necessarily entail democratization (Scicluna 2014). Genuine transnational political agents can indeed contribute to the emergence of a European public sphere, a democratic arena where they can make their contrasting visions of Europe visible and in an agonistic ethos (see Mouffe 2005: 20) compete with one another (see Katsambekis and Panayotu 2019). The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) offers a key opportunity for examining the potential of transnational populism. But first we need to demonstrate that DiEM25 constitutes a case of transnational populism. This is where I will turn my attention now by analyzing DiEM’s discourse and exploring whether it indeed opens up new possibilities for the democratic revitalization of the EU. I will begin by focussing on the context of its emergence as well as on its main characteristics and organizational structure.

5.4

DiEM25: Emergence and Key Characteristics

DiEM25 was launched on 9 February 2016 in Berlin. The idea for a panEuropean project was born in the summer of 2015 during the Subversive

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Festival in Zagreb in the course of constructive interaction between the former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and the Croatian author and political activist Sre´cko Horvat (see Varoufakis 2016a). After the Greek referendum in July 2015 and Alexis Tsipras’ capitulation, which led to the third bailout agreement and the continuation of harsh austerity policies, Varoufakis came to the understanding that, ‘it is time for a European network’ (2015). As he explained in a speech he gave in Frangy-en-Bresse in France in August 2015, this European network should not be […] another political party but a pan-European inclusive coalition from Helsinki to Lisbon and from Dublin to Athens committed to moving from the Europe of ‘We, the governments’ to ‘We, the people’. (Varoufakis 2015)

The first step towards the realization of this vision was taken six months later. From the central stage of the Volksbühne, the ‘Theatre of the People’ in Berlin, DiEM25 was introduced in response to the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble’s declaration that ‘elections cannot change anything’ (quoted in Ambrose 2015). This describes well the first period of the SYRIZA-led government when a democratically elected party on the national level failed to fulfil its promises to end the austerity policies imposed by the so-called ‘Troika’, namely the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. According to DiEM25 this defeat uncovered the antidemocratic structure of the EU and highlighted the need to act primarily on the pan-European level in order to ensure a democratic Europe, ‘a Europe for its people’ (DiEM25 2017a). In a more provocative way, Varoufakis argues that ‘the nation-state is dead’, and thus ‘instead of going from the nation-state level to the European level […] we should do it the other way around’ (Varoufakis 2016b: 18, 33). Elaborating on that, the movement’s Manifesto highlights that DiEM’s aspiration is not to ‘delete the nation-state from the map’ as Souvlis and Mazzolini maintain (2016), and as a post-national project would aim to, but to strengthen the fight for democracy through a transnational network:

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While the fight for democracy from below (at the local, regional or national levels) is necessary, it is insufficient if it is conducted without […] a pan-European coalition for democratizing Europe. (DiEM25 2016: 5)

The most important problem that the EU faces for DiEM is the lack of democracy in the decision-making process (Varoufakis 2016c). Adopting a stance of ‘constructive disobedience’ (DiEM25 2017b: 6–7), DiEM25 strives for the democratization of the EU with its immediate aim being ‘full transparency in decision-making’, entailing the livestreaming and the publication of the minutes of decisive meetings of EU institutions and informal bodies such as the Eurogroup, access to all important documents related to crucial negotiations as well as the monitoring of lobbying activities (DiEM25 2016: 5). What is more, DiEM25 introduces a policy agenda, the European New Deal , intending first to stabilize Europe’s five-dimensional crisis (debt, banking sector, inadequate investment, migration, rising poverty) within the existing institutional framework and then to fight for ‘real democracy […] at the transnational European level’ (DiEM25 2017b: 6, 9–10). In particular, DiEM’s New Deal is devised in three phases. The first two phases include a set of pragmatic, moderate and mainly Keynesian solutions that can be implemented within the existing framework either without any Treaty amendments at all or with ‘bilateral/multilateral agreements between governments’ (DiEM25 2017b: 25). The subsequent third phase involves a potentially more radical and transformative vision entailing a bottomup Constitutional process (DiEM25 2017b: 9, 25). The development of a new Constitutional Assembly that will combine elements of direct and representative democracy1 and will be responsible for drafting a democratic European Constitution is the long-term goal of this New Deal (DiEM25 2016: 6; Panayotu 2017: 14; Blokker 2019). That distinguishes DiEM from other actors revealing its radical-democratic character and its transformative aspirations for the EU. In defence of its 1

The Constitutional Assembly will be composed as follows: ‘25% will be randomly drawn among the entire body of the European citizens; 25% will be directly elected by the citizens via transnational lists; 25% will represent the member states, while the final 25% will represent territories and municipalities’ (DiEM25 2018: 7).

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transnationalism, DiEM25 emphasises that the reason why the European crisis remains unresolved is because it is ‘left in the hands of national governments powerless to act upon them’ (DiEM25 2016: 5). As we observe DiEM attaches itself to the EU. It is about reforming or transforming the EU towards a more democratic direction. ‘In the EU, against this EU’ (Varoufakis 2016c) is a slogan that encapsulates DiEM25’s pro-European position. This was also DiEM25’s input in the British referendum in 2016 when they campaigned against Brexit by joining forces with the Another Europe Is Possible movement and the Labour party. In this regard, DiEM25 can be viewed as a case of progressive Euroalternativism, since it is ‘policies, not the polity at stake here’ (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020: 220). While DiEM does not oppose the project of European integration per se, it criticizes specific functions and institutions of the EU and it attempts to offer an alternative from within. In that way DiEM25 sets itself apart from those [both on the Right and] on the Left that advocate a withdrawal from the EU, ‘because disbandment of the EU is going to unleash demonic forces of deflation, recession, unemployment that will feed the serpent’s egg’ (Varoufakis 2019a). DiEM’s alternative involves the transnationalization of EU politics. Its transnational approach, however, does not neglect the national nor the local level. This is clearly indicated by the structure of the movement. More specifically, DiEM moves from the transnational to the national and local levels in an attempt to connect them to one another. To be more precise, the Coordinating Collective (CC), consisting of twelve members elected every year by an online all-members vote, is a transnational body responsible for the coordination of all DiEM25’s activities (DiEM25 2017c). Then there is the Advisory Panel (AP) where we can find well-known personalities from across the world like Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek and Naomi Klein who can suggest actions and campaigns to the CC2 (ibid.). Another organ is the Validating Council (VC), that is a group of a hundred members selected every six months

2

This body has a more permanent character while every member is free to recommend potential Advisors and the Validating Council (VC) is responsible for their approval.

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by sortition from a pool of self-nominated candidates, with the responsibility to validate with a Yes or No proposals put to them by the CC. So far the national element is missing in these organs, while another thing that has to be mentioned is that gender-balance rules apply to all elected roles (ibid.). On the local level, DiEM25’s members can form Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs), that is self-organized groups charged with the task of developing policy recommendations, initiating events and campaigns with the aim to promote DiEM’s Manifesto (DiEM25 2017c). While the initial envisaged structure of DiEM did not include National Collectives (NCs), the CC very soon decided to set up this intermediate organ. On the national level then DiEM has its NCs involving ten to sixteen people elected in the same way with the CC. NCs are responsible for the coordination at the national level and the organization of national campaigns dependent upon the approval of the CC (ibid.). Members can thus participate in DSCs, and run for a position in NCs or the CC, but the most crucial point is that all important decisions are taken transnationally, by an online all-members vote.

5.5

Transnational Populism in the Discourse of DiEM25

Having drawn attention to the context within which DiEM25 emerged as well as its main aims and organizational structure, we now need to focus on the question of its transnational populism and its potential effect on European democracy. In making the claim that the discourse of DiEM constitutes a populist one that also escapes the national boundaries and purports to construct a transnational popular subject, I utilize the discursive framework outlined previously and I draw on a corpus that covers the period from February 2016, DiEM’s birthdate up to the European Parliament elections of 2019. This corpus includes manifestoes, campaigns, press releases, open letters, selected interviews and speeches of DiEM’s main figures with Yanis Varoufakis being the most prominent. DiEM’s discourse clearly builds upon a populist dichotomic schema pitting ‘us, the people’ versus ‘them, the establishment’. Its basic claim:

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Europe’s deep establishment has turned its back to ‘the people’ initiating a war against European democracy (see DiEM25 2016: 6), follows without a doubt a populist logic. DiEM25’s manifesto in its latest version published in the 2020 revised Vision of Europe stresses boldly: We, the people of Europe, have a duty to regain control over our Europe from unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions. We come from every part of the continent and are united by different cultures, languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours, gender identities, faiths and conceptions of the good society. We are forming DiEM25 intent on moving from a Europe of ‘We the Governments’ and ‘We the technocrats’, to a Europe of ‘We, the people of Europe’. (DiEM25 2020: 22)

This version is actually identical to the first one. The only difference concerns the formulation ‘we, the people of Europe’, which in the old version takes the form of ‘we, the peoples of Europe’. We will return to this issue in a moment. For now, what we have to note is that this is quite obviously a populist framework; an attempt to create a chain of equivalence between diverse groups and demands which are united to fight against a common enemy. In particular, demands such as transparency, popular sovereignty, defence of social rights, defence of the rights of the refugees, gender equality, ending austerity policies, were merged into a single chain around democracy that functions here as an empty signifier (Panayotu 2017: 11). The charismatic figure of Yanis Varoufakis also operates as an empty signifier ‘[…] to which a multiplicity of meanings can be attributed’ (Panizza 2005: 19; Panayotu 2017: 11). As we have seen, empty signifiers give coherence to the chain of equivalence. It is through the latter that a new popular subject, namely a ‘we, the people’ emerges and the other element that secures the unity of this chain is the common opposition to a ‘they, the establishment’ (see Mouffe 2018: 80). So, who are the ‘we’ and the ‘they’ that DiEM25 constructs? Allow me to begin with the latter first: who are the members of what DiEM considers to be the establishment/the elites? References to a ‘deep establishment caught up in a negative spiral of authoritarianism, antidemocratic behaviour and austerity’ (Varoufakis 2017a) are very often. It

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is a ‘they’ that ‘seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities’ (DiEM25 2016: 1; 2020: 18). We have a different chain of equivalence in which democracy plays again a central role, with one fundamental difference: it is the denial of democracy, not a demand for democracy, that provides coherence to this chain (see De Cleen et al. 2019: 12). But still, who are ‘they’, the elites? There is a whole list in DiEM’s manifesto that describes in detail who these elites are: • The Brussels bureaucracy (and its more than 10,000 lobbyists) • Its hit-squad inspectorates and the Troika they formed together with unelected ‘technocrats’ from other international and European institutions • The powerful Eurogroup that has no standing in law or treaty • Bailed out bankers, fund managers and resurgent oligarchies perpetually contemptuous of the multitudes and their organized expression • Political parties appealing to liberalism, democracy, freedom and solidarity to betray their most basic principles when in government • Governments that fuel cruel inequality by implementing self-defeating austerity • Media moguls who have turned fear-mongering into an art form, and a magnificent source of power and profit • Corporations in cahoots with secretive public agencies investing in the same fear to promote secrecy and a culture of surveillance that bend public opinion to their will (DiEM 2016: 1; 2020: 18). National oligarchies are also added to this list‚ for instance the German and the Greek oligarchy, but for DiEM these national oligarchies should not be fought by the German or the Greek people alone, instead as Varoufakis highlights ‘let’s all get together and fight our own oligarchies together’ (Varoufakis 2019b). We are, thus, dealing with transnational and national elites but the critical element is that DiEM proposes a transnational fight against both of them. Furthermore, not only have these forces of the establishment excluded the demos from democracy (Varoufakis 2017c), but also, they fuel the rise of what DiEM25 calls the Nationalist International (Varoufakis 2016d; Marsilli 2019a). In the

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words of Varoufakis, there is ‘an evil dance between partners’ and that is what makes this establishment ‘vicious’ and ‘the greatest enemy of Europe’ (Varoufakis 2019c). On the other side, ‘the people’ that DiEM25 calls upon consists of the many that suffer from austerity across Europe, Europe’s working and middle classes and of ‘every genuine democrat’ (see Varoufakis 2016c; Marsilli 2019b). DiEM aims to be a broad coalition of democrats: radical democrats; left-wing democrats; social democrats; green democrats; liberal democrats; the purpose of whom is to put the ‘demos’ back to democracy against the EU establishment that sees people power as a threat to its authority. (Varoufakis 2016c)

We see that while clearly originating on the Left, DiEM25 ‘is aiming to be much more than that’ (Varoufakis 2016c), striving to become a ‘political infrastructure’ that will bring together European democrats ‘independently of political party affiliation or ideology’ (Varoufakis 2016b: 32), in order to create common answers to common problems and common threats. In other words, DiEM25 aims to speak to everyone and not only to those who position themselves on the left. The ‘we’ that DiEM aspires to construct goes beyond ideologies and previous party affiliations. This is not irrelevant to the populist character of the movement. In general, the populist logic is marked by transversality, a term used by Podemos to denote the move beyond the conventional left and right spectrum (Agustín and Briziarelli 2018: 19; Prentoulis 2020: 102). What is also evident is that DiEM’s ‘we’ celebrates heterogeneity and pluralism. Rather than excluding each other, unity and diversity go hand in hand in this case, we are celebrating this coming together of so many people across the continent, across national borders, across the mental divides of different political parties, different predispositions, visions of the good society, of so many democrats getting together to tell the establishment in no uncertain terms we shall not be deluded by your hypnotic tale of a false dawn. (Varoufakis 2017b; see also Eno 2016)

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In this spirit DiEM defends refugees’ rights encouraging Europe to ‘let them in’ and initiating a campaign to ‘Stop the deal’, that is the 2016 EU-Turkey deal on the deportation of asylum seekers. The demands of refugees are thus articulated with the demands of the middle and working classes into the chain of equivalence. The same applies to the demands of the LGBT community for ‘equal rights for all people’ (Telonis 2018). ‘The people’, then, that DiEM constructs is an inclusive, active, democratic and transnational one. Indeed, ‘the people’ of DiEM25’s discourse is not restricted to the national level. On the contrary, it goes beyond the nation-states and refers to ‘the people’ at a pan-European level (see Panayotu 2017: 10). However, there is a degree of ambiguity between the use of ‘the people’ in the singular form and ‘the peoples’ of Europe in the plural (see De Cleen et al. 2019: 9, 14; Moffitt 2017: 414). Sometimes the shifts between the two happen very rapidly. The following extract from a draft on the Constituent Assembly is quite characteristic: The Constitution, elaborated by the peoples of Europe, would become the source of legitimacy and sovereignty. It will be the beginning of a new age: the age of ‘We, the People of Europe’. (DiEM25 2018: 4, emphasis mine)

Although it is not stated explicitly here, the ‘new age’ implies precisely a process of unification, of constructing a common identity, a European people that is not meant to suppress the heterogeneity of ‘the peoples’. ‘Every identity is constructed’ says Varoufakis and he continues by emphasizing the role of political action in this construction. For DiEM the drafting of a European Constitution is one of the actions that will be pivotal in forging this identity (Varoufakis 2017c). This oscillation between singular and plural does not entail that DiEM remains tethered to the national level (see De Cleen et al. 2019) or even that it constitutes a case of inter- rather than transnational populism (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020: 222). As we have put it, transnationalism means between and beyond the nation-states and thus a transnational populism does not completely escape from the national level. Besides, the endeavour to

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form a common identity by bringing together a diverse set of demands and groups is evident in DiEM. As they put it: on top of our existing multiple identities, it is not only possible but also empowering to overlay a new one – a transnational identity of our own making: radical, antiauthoritarian, democratic Europeanism. (Barnett et al. 2016)

The construction of a shared transnational identity is thus part of DiEM’s project and, in the words of Paola Pietrandrea an ex-member of the CC, ‘through the struggle against European institutions, we can forge the European people’ (Pietrandrea 2018). All in all, DiEM25’s discourse is structured on the basis of a populist logic which draws an antagonistic frontier between two opposing agencies: ‘we, the people’ and ‘them, the establishment’. The idea put forward is that we need to go beyond the fetishism of national boundaries and thus DiEM attempts to construct a transnational people in the name of democracy against the ‘oligarchy-without-borders’ (see Varoufakis 2020) consisting of transnational and national elites. Now, how is DiEM’s transnational populism translated into policy proposals for the EU and what is the potential impact of these proposals on Europe’s democratic politics?

5.6

DiEM25’s Transnational Populism on Reforming the EU

To avoid any misconceptions, populism does not attach itself to any particular set of policies. It is an empty form (see Palonen 2018), a type of discourse that constructs ‘the people’ by locating it in a bottom-up antagonistic relationship to the establishment. What I am interested in examining in this section is how, if at all, DiEM’s articulation of populism and its conception of the popular subject affect its proposals for reforming the EU. To do that I will briefly focus on DiEM’s strategy in the 2019 European Parliament elections and its policy agenda New Deal for Europe as formulated in the common programme that DiEM

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created along with other European progressive forces for competing in these elections. Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, on 25 March 2017, DiEM25 presented in Rome its European New Deal as the basis for a ‘transnational Progressive International’ (DiEM25 2017d: 6). The creation of a single transnational list that will be able to take this New Deal to the ballot box for the 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections was identified as the first step towards DiEM25’s ambitious vision. According to DiEM: This list will set the frame to build, after the 2019 elections, the first successful transnational political party in EU history with the direct purpose of pushing also other political forces to follow us on that path, creating their own, finally real, transnational parties. (DiEM25 2018: 4–5)

We see here that DiEM aspires to create a genuine transnational party aiming to transform party competition on the EU level with the goal to inspire other forces to develop similar formations (Katsambekis and Panayotu 2019). This could improve public contestation over alternative policies on the EU level allowing European citizens to identify with panEuropean opposing platforms facilitating in that way the emergence of pan-European, transnational collective identities. Although the possibility of running with transnational lists was rejected by the EP, DiEM continued working on a transnational campaign for the EP elections by creating a transnational electoral alliance named ‘European Spring’ in order to ‘confront Europe’s deep establishment’ (Varoufakis and de Magistris 2018). The strategy of DiEM was twofold: on the one hand it attempted to form alliances with existing progressive parties that accepted DiEM’s New Deal as the basis of their common electoral programme; on the other hand, DiEM created its own national electoral wings, MeRA25 in Greece and Demokratie in Europa in Germany. These developments brought DiEM closer to what has been described as hybrid movement-parties (see dell Porta et al. 2017). However, it is crucial to note that DiEM has not turned itself into a party. Its electoral wings are perceived as another mechanism added to

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the movement’s toolbox aiming to bring DiEM’s agenda in the electoral scene. The European Spring was then a transnational alliance through which DiEM linked a set of national parties—the Alternativet (The Alternative) from Denmark, the French Génération.s, Lewica Razem (Left Together) from Poland, Livre (Free) from Portugal, Actúa (Act) and Izquierda en Positivo (Left in Positive) from Spain, the German Demokratie in Bewegung (Democracy in Motion) and, of course, its own electoral wings in Germany and Greece—to a transnational electoral project that presented the same programme across the seven countries that competed for the 2019 EP elections. This clearly contradicts the way that existing Europarties function. The latter might produce electoral manifestos for the EP elections but these are rarely used by the affiliated national parties that tend to focus their campaigns for the European elections on domestic issues (see e.g., Kovár, Sychra and Kratochvíl 2020: 122). The transnational populism of DiEM played a crucial role in building the European Spring alliance. The numerous open calls released by DiEM and Varoufakis himself emphasised the need to unite against a common enemy and ‘give the people of Europe a real alternative to the Establishment’ (DiEM25 Communications 2018a; see also Varoufakis and de Magistris 2018; Varoufakis 2018). One of the central elements of the European Spring’s electoral manifesto draws directly upon DiEM’s transnational populism: The European Union must be governed by the people of Europe, and for the people of Europe. Today, the EU suffers from a deficit of democracy: unelected officials make decisions behind closed doors, where corporate lobbyists have far too much influence. (European Spring 2019: 7)

For DiEM and the European Spring a democratic European Union in the service of ‘the many, not the few’ (European Spring 2019: 22) requires the transnationalization of EU politics. They thus saw in the EP elections an opportunity to show what a transnational political force would look like in practice. To begin with, the electoral manifesto of the DiEM-led European Spring was created transnationally by also inviting members to actively participate in the process. To do that DiEM and

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the European Spring’s affiliated parties agreed to offer direct membership to their transnational alliance. Members then could register for free and access the European Spring Members Area via which they could suggest amendments to the programme (DiEM25 Communications 2018b). Apart from the common programme and a campaign that placed Europe at its centre, this approach involved the organisation of open, online, primaries for the selection of candidates and the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) (Marsilli 2019a; Varoufakis 2019d). All members of DiEM25 and the affiliated partners of the European Spring could vote and choose their candidates in all seven countries independently from their nationality. A German, for example, ‘had a say on the candidates in Greece and vice versa’ (Varoufakis 2019d). Another aspect of this transnational approach had to do with the effort to have candidates of different European nationalities in the countries they competed. For instance, in Germany, the electoral list included a Greek—Yanis Varoufakis— a Croatian—Srecko Horvat—and an Austrian—Dani Platsch—among the Germans who were running. All these elements reveal what the new transnational form of politics entail for DiEM and the European Spring in contrast to the old way of doing European politics with the dominant role of national parties. For DiEM to transnationalize EU politics one needs genuine transnational parties. As I have put it earlier, such formations can play a vital role in improving contestation over alternative policies on the EU level and allowing European citizens to identify with opposing pan-European platforms. It is through this process of identification that transnational collective identities can emerge. What is more, members’ participation in drafting the electoral manifesto and in the selection of the lead candidate and/or the candidates of such transnational European parties can increase inclusiveness and enhance democratic decision making. What was highlighted in the campaign was that problems connected to public debt, banking, inadequate investment, poverty, unemployment,taxation, migration, equal rights for all and climate change are borderless and they thus demand transnational, pan-European,solutions (European Spring 2019). More closely to the electoral manifesto, the central position of ‘the people of Europe’ is realized in a set of policy proposals that advocate among others:

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(1) the strengthening of the European Parliament with the right to initiate legislation (European Spring 2019: 7) (2) the empowerment of European citizens through a blending of direct and representative democratic mechanisms with one aspect being the improvement of the European Citizen’s Initiative by limiting the role of the Commission in the whole process (ibid.: 7–8) (3) measures to increase transparency and democratic accountability (ibid.: 8–10) (4) the fight against corruption and the monitoring of lobbying along with ensuring that multinational corporations pay their taxes (ibid.: 7, 28) (5) the introduction of a universal citizen dividend and a solidarity programme to fight poverty (ibid.: 11, 14–16) (6) the protection and expansion of social rights with regard, among others, to health, housing, water (ibid.: 16) (7) the protection of the rights of the refugees and migrants (ibid.: 28– 31) (8) gender equality and the protection of the LGBTTQIA+ rights (ibid.: 34–36) (9) the transition to green and sustainable societies with a large-scale green investment fund (ibid.: 17–21). We observe that demands for a democratic, transparent, pluralist, open, just, social and green Europe are articulated in the New Deal for Europe representing the vision of the DiEM-led European Spring for a Europe of ‘we, the people’. This vision was juxtaposed to the dominant version of European integration seen predominantly as a project of neoliberal-minded market competition. Although the European Spring collected 1, 402, 387 votes in the seven countries it competed in, it failed to elect an MEP. The examination of the reasons of this electoral failure is beyond the scope of this paper. However, it shows something about the limits of forces like DiEM25 and transnational politics in general. On the one hand, by placing Europe at the centre of its campaign and aiming to change the way that European Parliament elections are treated by traditional political forces (as ‘second order’ national elections), DiEM’s European Spring seems to be the

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exception that proves the rule: those who focus on domestic issues attract more votes. On the other hand, connecting to that, DiEM25 reflects a structural obstacle that all transnational formations are bound to face: the fact that democratic representation is still first and foremost national or as Yuliya Moskvina has put it in this volume ‘the transnational institutions representing transnational people do not exist in present’ (see also De Cleen 2017: 357). Nevertheless, there is a significant opportunity here. Since the EU is a peculiar form of ‘governance without opposition’ (see Neunreither 1998), suffering, in other words, from an ‘opposition deficit’ (Rauh and De Wilde 2018), incorporating pro-EU critical stances rather than silencing them could be a chance for strengthening the European integration process. For, as Peter Mair has anticipated, failure to do so will reinforce anti-EU mobilizations opposing the EU polity as a whole (2007).

5.7

Conclusion

To conclude, DiEM25 provides a key case of transnational populism aiming at the democratic transformation of the EU. As we have seen DiEM seeks to construct a transnational people linked to an egalitarian project in which the democratization of the EU is seen as the precondition for the emancipation of ‘the people’. It is ‘the people of Europe [that] have a right […] and a duty to transform Europe’ contra to Europe’s deep establishment (see DiEM25 2016: 5; 2017b: 8, 88). Far from being the greatest enemy of the EU, populism can be a chance for making Europe ever more democratic. Put it in another way, the populist logic does not necessarily imply different forms of a Eurosceptic or a Euro-reject stance but a populist project can work towards the democratic refoundation of the EU. Populism, and more specifically a transnational populism‚ might contribute to creating a pan-European identity in the name of democracy. In this context transnational populist forces can expand party politics and increase public contestation and inclusiveness on the EU level. I began this chapter by exploring the specificity of transnational populism. On the theoretical level the discursive, formal, approach of

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the Essex School helps one escape deterministic impasses that identify populism with different forms of antagonistic politics, such as nationalism and nativism. The discursive framework reveals that populist politics and the populist construction of ‘the people’ can take place out of the nation–state complexifying the clearcut picture of those who maintain that in the absence of the nation–state there can be no people (see Virno 2004: 22). This realization opens the possibility of envisaging a transnational populism. What defines the latter is the construction of a transnational people in opposition to an elite or a set of elites. This transnational identity does not entail a single, post-national, identity that would erase national identities. It would rather coexist with diverse national identities leading to a plural conception of shared identities (see e.g., Nicolaïdis 2013). This is evident in the discourse of DiEM25 that is articulated around the populist antagonistic schema, building a common identity that while going beyond national boundaries, does not aim to eliminate national identities. Transnational forces like DiEM can contribute to the emergence of an agonistic transnational public sphere where political actors develop their contrasting visions for Europe. As I have put it, the identification with such transnational formations can generate transnational collective identities resulting to a Europe of peoples. Finishing with a more general point about the potential of transnational populism in the present conjuncture, one might remind us of what Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni describe as ‘a divorce between power and politics’, that is to say that (real) power is located in the global level while politics remains national and local (2014: 12). The reason for this divorce is the ‘absence of agency’ (ibid.). I do not see the reason why a left-wing, transnational, inclusive and pluralist populism could not fill this gap and lead Europe’s democratic politics into a new phase.

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Prentoulis, M. (2020) Left Populism as a Political Project, in E. Eklundh and A. Knott (eds.), The Populist Manifesto, London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Puri, K. (presenter), Jones, R. (producer). (2019, 14 May) Will Populism Destroy the EU? in The Inquiry. London: BBC. Rauh, C., and de Wilde, P. (2018) The Opposition Deficit in EU Accountability: Evidence from Over 20 Years of Plenary Debate in Four Member States, European Journal of Political Research, 57(1): 194–216. Roch, J. (2020) Friends or Foes? Europe and ‘the People’ in the Representations of Populist Parties, Politics, August 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/026339572 0938537. Scicluna, N. (2014) Politicization Without Democratization: How the Eurozone Crisis is Transforming EU Law and Politics, International Journal of Constitutional Law, 12(3), July 2014, pp. 545–571. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/ mou043. Souvlis, G., and Mazzolini, S. (2016) An Open Letter to Yanis Varoufakis. Available at: http://criticallegalthinking.com/2016/04/07/open-letter-yanisvaroufakis/. Stabenow, M. (2010) EU-Ratspräsident Van Rompuy: Anlaufstelle für Merkel und Sarkozy, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9 April. Stavrakakis, Y. (2007) The Lacanian Left, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stavrakakis, Y. (2013) The European Populist Challenge. Anali Hrvatskog politološkog društva: cˇasopis za politologiju, 10(1): 25–39, http://hrcak.srce.hr/ 123089. Stavrakakis, Y. (2017) Discourse Theory in Populism Research: Three Challenges and a Dilemma, Journal of Language and Politics, 16(4): 523–534. Stavrakakis, Y., Katsambekis, G., Nikisianis, N., Kioupkiolis, A., and Siomos, T. (2017) Extreme Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Revisiting a Reified Association, Critical Discourse Studies, 14(4): 420–439. Stewart, A. (1969) The Social Roots, in Ghita Ionescu and Ernest Gellner (eds), Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, pp. 180–195. Taggart, P. (2000) Populism, Buckingham: Open University Press. Telonis, A. (2018) LGBT Rights Are Not Negotiable: Equality and Equity Now!, Article on DiEM’s Webpage. Available at: https://diem25.org/lgbt-rights-arenot-negotiable-equality-and-equity-now/. Tsipras, A. (2013) The Destruction of Greece as a Model for All of Europe: Is This the Future That Europe Deserves? Foreword , in S. Zizek, and S. Horvat

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(eds.), What Does Europe Want: The Union and Its Discontents, London: Istrosbooks, pp. 9–16. Varoufakis, Y. (2015) The Athens Spring Lives On, speech at Frengy-en-Bresse. Available at: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ frangy-2-23-aug-2015.pdf. Varoufakis, Y. (2016a) Yanis Varoufakis A Guerilla Interview in AthensLive (AL). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-jl7KRDl5g. Varoufakis, Y. (2016b) Democracy, Power and Sovereignty in Today’s Europe, interviewed by N. Buxton, in TNI’s Fifth Annual State of Power 2016 Report, pp. 18–35. Varoufakis, Y. (2016c) Speech at the DiEM’s Launch Event at Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre, February. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= GkWwUG0p89Y. Varoufakis, Y. (2016d) Speech at DiEM25-Another Europe Is Possible Event Held at the LSE. Available at: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/10/ 11/to-prevent-brexit-from-turning-nasty-progressive-internationalists-mustcome-close-to-winning-10-downing-street/. Varoufakis, Y. (2017a) Speech at DiEM’s Event 25M: The Time of Courage in Rome. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU-oDVGCCAs& ab_channel=DiEM25. Varoufakis, Y. (2017b) Speech at DiEM’s Event The Real State of the Union in Brussels. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTpoiuNLKRA& ab_channel=DiEM25Belgium. Varoufakis, Y. (2017c) Speech at DiEM25’s Launch in Ireland. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtrn6UbVmGQ&ab_channel= Diem25DublinDSCIreland. Varoufakis, Y. (2018) Conversation with Jeremy Corbyn at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOTMhA 5rgpw&ab_channel=edbookfest. Varoufakis, Y., and de Magistris, L. (2018) Open Letter to Gregor Gysi (European Party of the Left), Pablo Iglesias (Podemos), Catarina Martins (Bloco) and Jean Luc Melenchon (FI), Available at: https://diem25.org/open-letter-to-gre gor-gysi-europeanparty-of-the-left-pablo-iglesias-podemos-catarina-martinsbloco-and-jean-luc-melenchon-fi/. Varoufakis, Y. (2019a) Novara meet Yanis Varoufakis live at The World Transformed , Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ck0Jg92bPk& ab_channel=NovaraMedia.

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Varoufakis, Y. (2019b) Speech at the European Spring’s Event. The EU in Crisis: What’s Next? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKnrUr YLlj0&t=7990s&ab_channel=DiEM25. Varoufakis, Y. (2019c) Speech at DiEM25/European Spring’s Event, A Citizen Takeover of the EU Institutions. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=o4Y51__i3Nk&ab_channel=DiEM25. Varoufakis, Y. (2019d) Reflections on 2019, in Chakrabortty, A. (ed.), Bedside Guardian 2019, London: Guardian Books. Varoufakis, Y. (2020) On Post-Capitalism, DiEM25 TV, Another Now #9. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFH_D6q62xM&t=32s& ab_channel=DiEM25. Virno, P. (2004) A Grammar of the Multitude. For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, New York: Semiotext(e). Weiler, J.H.H. (1995) Does Europe Need a Constitution? Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision. European LQW Journal, I(3), November 1995, 219–258.

6 Transnational Populism: The Populist Challenge from the Left? Patricia Chiantera-Stutte

6.1

Introduction

Populism from the left has only recently been studied in depth (March 2008; Moffitt 2017; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014; Kioupkiolis 2016; Dean and Maiguashca 2017), even if as early as 2008 Luke March was able to affirm that political science has to cope with the fact that “The European far Left is here to stay” (March 2008: 17). As Stravrakakis and Katsambekis (2014) and Kioupkiolis (2016) amongst others show, this late interest could be related not only to the more recent emergence and lesser success of left-wing populism, in comparison with right-wing populism, but also to a methodological problem, namely to the unease at defining it scientifically as a category separate from its “sibling” populism from the right. Another crucial point P. Chiantera-Stutte (B) Department of Political Sciences, University of Bari, Bari, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_6

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regarding the discussion of left-wing populism concerns the general classification of political mainstream and populist movements: the main axis of comparison between parties and movements lies along the opposition between system-parties and populist parties. As a result, the specific history of the left-wing populist movements—in particular, the fact that populism emerged originally before the 1917 Russian revolution and since then has had a conflictual relation with Marxism (Venturi 1961; Charalambous and Ioannou 2020)—is neglected. Therefore, the relation between social democracy and communism, on the one hand, and populism, on the other should be more thoroughly investigated. This seems even more relevant now, when the distinction between, on the one side, traditional radical left-wing parties and movements and, on the other, populist parties and movements seems to blur—as was evident for instance in Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party in Great Britain, defined as populist in some academic literature (Dean and Maiguashca 2017). Taking seriously the need to consider left-wing populist parties and their specific position, my contribution deals with the development of the left-wing populist transnational movement DiEM25, founded in 2016 by the former Greek Minister Varoufakis. I have chosen DiEM25, as it is a good example of left-wing populism which clearly has its roots in the left political tradition (in particular that of Gramsci and Laclau) and, at the same time, develops a self-representation as a populist movement, going beyond both the Marxist and social-democratic political traditions. Transnational populism has been connoted by its leaders as a left-wing movement originating within the left-wing political constellation of Syriza (Katsambekis 2016) and rooted in the so-called Essex school of politics led by Ernesto Laclau. Of all populist movements, DiEM25 is possibly the one which has the strongest ideological and intellectual foundations in a political theory—specifically, in Laclau’s model of populism. Even if it originates from the contingent popular mobilization against European austerity policies—the so-called Athen’s Spring—DiEM25 is a conscious and solid political attempt to manage the political European crisis and to provide both a strategy and a theoretical political foundation for a new form of populist politics. This political movement

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may be partly considered like an experiment in a laboratory; in other words, the attempt has given shape to a popular protest movement and created a hegemonic countermovement which could be mostly inspired by Laclau’s idea of populism. Unlike the right-wing populist movements, this form of populism has a more reflexive and productive relationship to an old and solid political tradition of thought—namely Marxism and post-Marxism—and appears to be ideologically and strategically shaped by open-minded political leadership. DiEM’s “populism from above” (Panayotu 2017) means, on the one hand, that its charismatic leadership is held by Iannis Varoufakis, and, on the other hand, that the movement’s development and actions are not opportunistic, but depend on discussion and on the elaboration of a theoretically solid theory on society and politics. In other words, DiEM25 formulates a new idea of a transnational people and is clearly inspired by some of the main principles and aims of the traditional leftist international movement. Much research has been carried out only on the first aspect, namely the promotion of a new idea of spatial relevant scales in politics (Agnew and Shin 2017) in a post-ideological political arena. Hence many investigations have almost taken for granted the populist character of transnational movements, considering them as having gone beyond right and left-wing distinctions. In contrast, I will look at DiEM25’s ideological roots, namely at its left-wing foundation and theoretical inspiration, and frame its position not only in relation to other contemporary movements but also to its founding theories and approaches, which refer to the left-wing tradition of thought. In other words, I will consider DiEM as a populist movement inspired by Laclau—which is clearly represented by Varoufakis, its pre-eminent leader (Hancox 2015). Laclau’s idea of populism (Laclau 2005) is not used here to generally explain the meaning of populism in politics, but rather to investigate the nature and shortcomings of the DiEM25 movement. Without neglecting the difference between Laclau’s theoretical work and DiEM25’s practical strategy, I suggest two arguments to help explain the relation between DiEM25 and Laclau’s theory: not only is Laclau’s doctrine an attempt to develop a political strategy, but DiEM25’s leader Varoufakis also seems de facto to refer to Laclau’s work as his main

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political orientation (Varoufakis 2015; Ferraresi 2016; De Cleen 2015) and focuses his strategy on the achievement of the hegemony of DiEM25 over other social and political movements. This contribution aims at specifically investigating DiEM25’s attempt to create a hegemonic movement. Hegemony, in this case, means the successful creation of a “discourse”—in Laclau’s (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 105–6) terms—and altogether of a bloc—in Gramsci’s (1971: 12– 13, 57) interpretation—which is antagonistic to the social and political system, based not only on the alliance of various political protest movements but on their acknowledgement of being part of one homogeneous collective, with a common “demand”. Hegemony, in the sense of antagonism against opposing groups and, institutionally, the alliance between distinct political forces, in order to build a political bloc, is a classic issue that has been discussed by the Left at least since the twentieth century. In this respect, Laclau through his theory and Varoufakis through his political praxis provide an original perspective on the issue of hegemony, taking into consideration the contemporary political challenges of the new social movements whose emergence has led to the re-interpretation of political values like equality, justice and difference. This contribution shows that some shortcomings of transnational populism, when it tries to build a hegemonic bloc, may become evident and be explained only if we refer to the movement’s political orientation and tradition, or in other words if DiEM25’s political attempt at hegemony is analyzed and seen in the light of the new theory of hegemony devised by Ernesto Laclau. In order to shed light on the political dilemmas of the transnational populist movement, I will compare Laclau’s model of hegemony and his opinion of a possible socialist strategy in a post-ideological era (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 2007; Mouffe 2018) with DiEM25’s political strategy and language.

6.2

Challenges from the Left: DiEM25

The 2016 movement of Transnational Populism is a populist movement that at the same time belongs to the European parties of the radical left (Damiani 2020; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014). The radical left

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parties are defined by Luke March as parties that regard themselves as to the left of social democracy or part of international associations (Parties of the European Left) that also have a (radical) self-definition (March 2011: 15). It is worth stressing a fundamental division between the old traditional radical Left that existed up until the Second World War and the new radical Left: apart from rare cases, as March observes in his research, “the main raison d’être of the radical left parties is no longer revolution, but the preservation and enhancement of the traditional social democratic welfare consensus, albeit with a more environmental, feminist, Eurosceptic and extra-parliamentary slant” (March 2008: 18). Interestingly, the populist left-wing movements, which traditionally conflict with the mainstream socialist or social-democratic parties, seem to have been attracting a larger number of supporters recently. Moreover, the distinction—and traditional conflict—between these mainstream leftwing parties and the populist socialist ones seem to blur, as their respective political style and strategies become increasingly similar: the use of populist language and the appeal to a generic “people” in contrast with the elites is sometimes shared by both (Agustín 2020). As regards DiEM, the transformation of the whole political background as well as the growing crisis affecting European institutions may have played a relevant role in the rise of a left-wing Euroalternativism. The emergence in the 1980s of a new “master frame” by political right-wing movements, which together developed a nativist and populist aggression against national and international institutions, created a space for a growing left-wing populist opposition (Rooduijn and Akkerman 2017). On top of this, the “awakening of the sleeping giant” of EU opposition (Mair 2007; de Vries 2007; Chiantera-Stutte 2018) and the economic crisis in southern European countries, as well as the conflict between national governments and the EU Troika in 2010, offered new political opportunities to reformulate a claim for broader participation by EU citizens in international institutions. DiEM25 emerged as a response to the main challenges for European and national politics, which were trapped in a dilemma between accepting technocratic European institutions, under fire for their democratic deficit, and the restoration of nation-states “too big to generate loyalty and legitimacy

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needed for a demanding democratic ideal, and too small to solve a myriad of social problems” (Agustín 2020: 100). DiEM25’s position towards this double crisis has been defined as “a transnational left-wing project which combines the power of ’the peoples’ with the proposal for a European constitution to replace the existing treaties. As a result of this combination, DiEM25 incorporates populist (the power of the peoples) and republican (a new constitution) elements and, due to its position against the radical right and scepticism about nationalism, embraces cosmopolitanism too” (Agustín 2020: 112). In the words of its main leader, Yanis Varoufakis, “DiEM is an attempt to harness the energy unleashed by what we call ’the Athens spring’, our experiment in democracy in Greece that was crushed by the banks” (Varoufakis 2016a). At the same time, the movement even attracts EUsceptics who would have joined the right-wing neo-sovereignist Golden Dawn movement. DiEM25’s credibility and legitimacy further depend highly on the role of its main leader, Yanis Varoufakis, who was one of the main political actors in the EU and in the Greek opposition to the Troika and the Memorandum. Varoufakis’s function is pivotal in the movement, as a catalyst to change the international political setup by gathering different protest groups around a common project of transformation of both national and supranational politics (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020). It is necessary to stress that the “adversarial framing” (Aslanidis 2018; Gamson 1995) characterizing DiEM25’s language and program—namely the opposition to right-wing populism, to national neo-sovereignists and to the EU technocracy and lobbies—should not hide the relevance of its “identity framing” or in other words of the search for internal cohesion and diffusion through alliances with other protest groups and the production of a common frame of reference. This aspect has so far been almost entirely neglected, in spite of the fact that the double issue of cohesion and diffusion is pivotal in the emergence of any political movement. The emergence of a political movement is achieved both through opposition to an “enemy”—the antagonistic other—as well as through the identification within a common group and with other political protest collectives. The search for hegemony is not a purely theoretical question but a practical one, concerning the strategies needed to unite a force able to transform the existing political relations.

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In order to understand DiEM25’s strategy and identity it is necessary to briefly recall the main characteristics of Laclau’s hegemony theory and its shortcomings.

6.3

Hegemony: The Search for a Common Identity Trapped in a Post-Ideological Dilemma

Hegemony, in the interpretation given by Laclau, means the creation of a chain of equivalence or in other words the mobilization of different groups, movements and demands, rendered “equivalent to each other equivalent in their common rejection of the excluded identity” (Laclau 2007: 70), against the political system. In Gramsci’s traditional interpretation, hegemony is achieved when all partial movements come together and acknowledge their common project to create a new political order opposed to the existing one. The main issue in all theories of hegemony—and in hegemonic practical strategies too—is not only to obtain a changing and contingent alliance of different political forces, united with the aim of changing the political system, but also to anchor this strategy on something more stable, an identity, or a representation of the universality of certain political demands shared by all sub-groups of the movement. The crucial issues discussed in the Marxist and post-Marxist debate focus precisely on the ways to make a specific claim universal: this means creating one “people” out of different interest groups and constructing an ideology that could unite diverse and even conflicting identities within the protest movement against the existing system. Laclau, the leading intellectual who is clearly the main inspiration for the DiEM25 movement, is known to have formulated a new theory and strategy for hegemony in two of his main works—his 1985 “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy” and his 2005 “On Populist Reason”. He develops the Marxist tradition of thought, going beyond Gramsci’s fundamental theory. Hegemony is, according to Gramsci, a strategy achieved by the working class in order to create alliances and mobilize the masses against

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capitalism and the bourgeois State: this is only possible if the main political revolutionary agent provides a universal ideology, what Laclau calls a “discourse” about economic and political relations, that is shared by all protesting political forces and unites them. In this perspective, the working class is, again according to Gramsci, the political and cultural leader. Against Gramsci’s “foundation” of a hegemony theory on the basis of workers’ consciousness and class, Laclau maintains that “the problem of power cannot be posed in terms of the search for the class or the dominant sector. … But it is equally wrong to propose as an alternative either a pluralism or the total diffusion of power within the social” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 142). According to the Argentinian thinker, the working class is not the main irradiating point of the hegemonic strategy: the attempt to mobilize different protest groups with their, respectively, different grievances leads in our contemporary world to a contingent aggregation of various demands into a single one, and hence to the creation of a politically contingent subject around the so-called “empty signifier”—a centre, a central demand that epitomizes the movement’s identity. According to Laclau, the “specific universality inherent in hegemony […] results […] from the specific dialectic between the logics of difference and logics of equivalence. Social actors occupy differential positions within the discourses that constitute the social fabric. In that sense they are all, strictly speaking, particularities. On the other hand, there are social antagonisms creating internal frontiers within society. Vis-à-vis oppressive forces, for instance, a set of particularities establish relations of equivalence between each other. It becomes necessary, however, to represent the totality of the chain, beyond the mere differential particularisms of the equivalential links. … [The] relation, by which a certain particularity assumes the representation of a universality entirely incommensurable with it, is what we call a hegemonic relation” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: XIII). Hence, political subjectivity—what Laclau later defines as identity—is not pre-determined, but provisional: it depends on historical contingencies and continually shapes individual and collective self-representation. In Laclau’s perspective, the definition of hegemony became particularly relevant in contemporary society when, with the collapse of the Soviet model, “the very idea of socialism became discredited” (Laclau

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and Mouffe 1985: XIV) and the formulation of the “third way” as the main left-wing political project depoliticized the political debate and delegitimized any form of radical antagonism and protest. “This implies - he writes - that politics is no longer structured around social division, and that political problems have become merely technical” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: XV). The emergence of new social movements, the stress on pluralism and the demands for differences to be acknowledged alongside equality, have deepened the crisis of the Left, leading to the dismissal of any form of radical antagonism and social struggles. Therefore, hegemony is the main issue for the Left because it “can help us to understand that the present conjuncture, far from being the only natural or possible societal order, is the expression of a certain configuration of power relations. … The Left should start elaborating a credible alternative to the neo-liberal order, instead of simply trying to manage it in a more humane way” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: XVII). As Arditi astutely remarks (Arditi 2010), in Laclau’s subsequent seminal work on populism “On Populist Reason” (2007), populism is stressed more than hegemony: populism not only as the main force able to restore the meaning of social struggles and protest, but as the essence of the political, “either [as] the truth of the political or [as] the golden road to understanding it” (Arditi 491). Laclau writes: “If populism consists in postulating a radical alternative within the communitarian space, a choice at the crossroads on which the future of a given society hinges, does not populism become synonymous with politics? The answer can only be affirmative” (Laclau 2005: 47). Populism, which means the construction of an antagonistic political subjectivity, needs to be grounded internally on a hegemonic strategy, specifically on the creation of a homogeneous identity and the promotion of a central demand that is represented as “universal”. The universal character of the populist ideology and accordingly the homogeneous identity promoted by it are not stable and given once and for all: they represent the unachievable and impossible attempt to portray a plurality of demands as homogeneous. Populism is therefore successful when the antagonism against the “system”, namely the opposition between the existing dominant bloc and the emerging populist one, becomes so strong as to blur the internal diversities. This is made possible by a hegemonic strategy,

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the “operation of taking up, by a particularity, of an incommensurable universal signification” (Laclau 2007: 70). In sum, the hegemonic identity is grounded on the successful attempt to confer a universal character on a particular demand, which should be seen as an “empty signifier” because it seeks to embody a totality/universality that is ultimately impossible. In populism the central issue may be the “people” or the leader: a “people” that includes a plurality of interests, demands and desires (Laclau 2007: 115), or/and the leader, who embodies the “fullness of community” (Laclau 2007: 85), despite the fact that the community does not exist as a homogeneous collective with clear boundaries. Some evident dilemmas emerge in this approach, which have been partly discussed (Arditi 2010; McKean 2016), and may suggest that some questions remain open in the DiEM25 movement too: the oscillation between the use of hegemony as a strategy or as a source of identity, the distinction between left- and right-wing populism, the ambivalence between politics oriented towards difference/plurality and towards the achievement of equality and finally the definition of the empty signifier as a concept (people) or as the leader. It will be necessary here to provide a brief outline of these in order to later investigate DiEM25 politics. The first dilemma, namely the oscillation between populism as strategy or identity becomes clear in Laclau’s theory with regard to his discussion of Gramsci’s idea of hegemony. In “Hegemony and Social Strategy”, the Argentinian thinker suggests that hegemony as a strategy is “quite simply, a political type of relation, a form, if one wishes, of politics” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 139). Later in his work on populism he states that populism is a “political logic” (Laclau 2007: 117), and so “there is no political intervention which is not populistic to some extent” (Laclau 2007: 154). Elsewhere his insistence—in contrast with Marxism—on the lack of any class foundation in the hegemonic political process, throws up a theoretical problem: if the class is not the dominating agent, then the movement’s identity and scope should be the result of the contingent process of gathering together different protests and demands against the system. In this case the hegemonic identity will be dependent on the success of the “empty signifier” to function as a “glue”: it emerges as “the unification of … various demands – whose equivalence, up to that point, had not gone beyond a feeling of

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vague solidarity – into a stable system of signification” (Laclau 2007: 74). He reiterates this by speaking of “the consolidation of the equivalential chain through the construction of a popular identity which is something qualitatively more than the simple summation of the equivalential links” (Laclau 2007: 77). The question remains whether this new political “identity” needs to have a strategy—and therefore becomes a “center” of or the actor in the hegemonic process, like Gramsci’s working class, or continues to be contingent and open to redefinition—and in this case the movement’s internal stability and antagonism against the “order” will also become uncertain while the question about the contingency and ever possible disintegration of a populist movement becomes actual: because the particularity—the central demand—in question seeks to embody a totality/universality that is ultimately an impossible object, and it is based on the creation of an impossible “fullness” of the community (Laclau 2007: 70–71); either it risks forcing a homogeneous identity on different collective movements (McKean 2016) or is bound to be internally fragmented. The lack of a deep consideration of the issue regarding a founding identity of a new Left populist movement is related to the question of the difference between populism from the Right and from the Left. This question remains open in Laclau’s work: “whatever the political orientation through which the antagonism crystallizes (this will depend upon the chains of equivalence which construct it), the form of the antagonism as such is identical in all cases” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 170). This view is repeated in his later observations, when he implies that populism is any form of politics and he even blurs the distinction between the rightwing populist movements aiming at the “defense of privileges” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 170) and the social struggles of the Left. The only possibility to draw a line between Left and Right is left to an act of willingness, or rather to an act of faith: It is clear, therefore, that a left alternative can only consist of the construction of a different system of equivalents, which establishes social division on a new basis. In the face of the project for the reconstruction of a hierarchic society, the alternative of the Left should consist of locating itself fully in the field of the democratic revolution and expanding the

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chains of equivalents between the different struggles against oppression. The task of the Left therefore cannot be to renounce liberal-democratic ideology, but on the contrary, to deepen and expand it in the direction of a radical and plural democracy. ... the very fact that it is possible arises out of the fact that the meaning of liberal discourse on individual rights is not definitively fixed; and just as this unfixity permits their articulation with elements of conservative discourse, it also permits different forms of articulation and redefinition which accentuate the democratic moment. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 176)

The question is: what are equality and democracy in Laclau’s discourse? Two possible founding axes for the emergence of a left-wing populism? In this case does the question of the “identity” of the Left become relevant? And how should these two political values be related to “the people”, or to the “empty signifier”, which cannot be identified with pre-existent ideals or projects? In other words: are the people gathered around values such as democracy and equality different from “the people” claiming different or opposite political ideals? These questions are left unanswered by Laclau (1985) and Mouffe (2018). Thirdly, even if Laclau and Mouffe (1985) expressly raise the issue of a new Left politics which would keep together the traditional social struggles for equality and the issues of pluralism and diversity, they still do not give an answer to the possible conciliation of these two different kinds of political ideas (Mouffe 2018, see Panayotu 2017). Laclau seems to suggest an instrumental approach in his “Hegemony and Social Strategy”, when he states that “the unsatisfactory term ‘new social movements’ groups together a series of diverse struggles: urban, ecological, antiauthoritarian, anti-institutional, feminist, anti-racist … what interests us about these new social movements, then, is not the idea of arbitrarily grouping them into a category opposed to that of class, but the novel role they play in articulating that rapid diffusion of social conflictuality” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 159). It seems that they could be one of the protest movements contributing to the new hegemonic bloc against the system—thereby, as McKain points out, Laclau neglects the specific status of new movements which go beyond the Marxist idea of politics and society. The struggles for equality and for class emancipation have

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been highly criticized and politically opposed by the “new movements”, which aimed at a new interpretation of political subjectivity based on the promotion of plurality and diversity. The lack of specific consideration of the origin and meaning of these new social and political movements leaves unresolved the question of whether cooperation is theoretically and practically between them and both the Marxist political tradition of thought and the left-wing political parties and politics, as shown in the last work by Chantal Mouffe (2018). Finally, the “empty signifier”, or in other words the political demand that enhances the process of hegemony, is not well defined by Laclau: in his main works, it seems to be the “people”, whose homogeneous identity is juxtaposed to the elites, or sometimes the leader, who embodies the protest (Laclau 2007: 178–82).

6.4

DiEM25 in Search of Hegemony

Taking the self-representation of DiEM25 seriously, namely as a populist movement of the Left, means considering DiEM25’s strategy and identity as expressed in the main documents published on the web, against the background of the general debate on the issue of hegemony developed on the Left. The issues at stake here are: what is DiEM25’s strategy? Or rather: who are its “antagonists” and its allies at the institutional level—parties, institutions, movements? The founding reason for the constitution of DiEM25 lies in the struggle against EU bureaucracy and lobbies. So, some major antagonists of transnational populism are political technocrats, the Troika and the WTO. Transnational populism is presented in opposition to the EU: “We must replace the current structure, serving the rich and powerful, with a Union of all European countries under an independent Parliament that protects all Europeans as equal citizens … We must now unite under a common vision for Europe that recognizes the current limitations of the European Union and that seeks to build new forms of transnational solidarity”. Technocracy, or rather, in Laclau’s terms, the transformation of political questions and issues into technical procedures, leads to the failure of politics, to a reduction in the number of decisions that

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are democratically discussed and willingly taken by political communities. The reduction of political spaces, where people and movements can democratically debate, is related to what Balibar has called the “disappearing of the people”, namely the growing feeling that political decisions are taken by experts and technicians (Balibar 2004: 160). The people must take back their role in the democratic processes against the elites. As Moffit writes, “populists understand that contemporary politics is not just a matter of putting forward policies for voters to deliberate rationally upon some kind of homo politicus, but rather appealing to people with a full performative package that is attractive, emotionally resonant and relevant” (Moffitt 2019: 59). However, according to key DiEM25 documents, the opposition to the EU institutions does not lead to a plea for the abolition of any supranational institutions but rather for their reform: in the 2017 “European New Deal”, DiEM25 declares its willingness to work inside the EU. “We must thus make a start by using the existing institutions and work, as far as possible, within existing European treaties in a manner that stimulates the federal institutions we lack” (European New Deal 2017). It must be stressed that DiEM25’s attack on the EU is against the political system and the international political institutions, rather than against the economic corporations. This attitude is contrary to that of the classical Marxist approach. It is a striking difference even from the movements of the radical left, whose attacks are mainly directed at the economic lobbies and economic structures. DiEM25’s view of the nation-state is also ambiguous: transnational populism refuses to identify with a particular nation and to be structured as a national movement or party; however, its spatial references are the cities, the regions and even the nation-states themselves. In the document about the European New Deal, they declare “[i]ndeed we need to take our regions back. We need to take our cities and towns back … we need to reclaim common purpose amongst sovereign peoples. And to do this we need an internationalist, common, transnational European project” (European New Deal 2017). In addition, the “European New Deal” also proposes a return to the nations; giving back some key political prerogatives from the EU institutions to the individual countries is considered the main means of stabilizing Europe (European New Deal

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2017). In short, the main strategy that DiEM25 suggests is “constructive disobedience”, restoring control to the nation-states. In contrast with the traditional way of doing politics by classical political parties, whose political actions are directed towards a national electorate and audience, the transnational movement aims at creating a transnational audience and a transnational electorate (Moffitt 2017) and to provide a space for the coalition of all democratic forces, whatever their political position. DiEM25 is represented as “a broad coalition of democrats, radical democrats, left-wingers, social-democrats, green democrats, liberal democrats, the purpose of whom is to put the ‘demos’ back in democracy against the EU establishment” (Varoufakis 2016b). From this perspective, DiEM25 seems to be oscillating between its position as a catch-all movement and its left-wing political inspiration. However, as regards DiEM25’s attitude to specific political parties and movements, it pursues particular alliances and paths of behaviour. While clearly opposing right-wing populism and every claim to defend “Fortress Europe” against a “flood” of immigrants, DiEM25 finds its allies in the new movements, in Green politics, in left-wing populist movements, like Podemos, and in leftist parties, like the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. Support for refugees and for migrants, demands for political rights for migrants and for freedom of movement in the Schengen area, criticism of any idea of Europe as a fortress, as well as the demand for the end of the externalization of EU borders are some of the main points of the movement’s agenda (European Spring: New Deal for Europe 2019). The 2017 Program of DiEM25’s New Deal, which is explicitly inspired by Roosevelt’s politics and not by an extreme Left or even Marxist left the economic and social project, results from the convergence of the Green movement and left-wing transnational populists on a common platform. Some of its key points are the foundation of the Environmental Justice commission, Environmental Union, Green public works (European New Deal 2017). However, DiEM25’s position within the existing Left is far less clear. Some points in the European New Deal seem to embrace a social-democratic perspective on possible ways to manage the growing economic inequalities: stressing international and national solidarity through the cohesion Fund, a solidarity program, housing security and

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the introduction of higher European health standards, sharing the returns on capital and wealth, and funding basic goods for “Europe’s Maintainers” in their own community to prevent involuntary migration (European Spring 2019 Manifesto). Support for the Labour Party—one of the main “allies” for building a hegemonic bloc—seems to be one of the most stable characteristics of DiEM25, not only on account of a shared idea of social policies and economic reforms, but also with regard to a collaboration for the reform of EU institutions (Jones 2020; Varoufakis 2016c). On the other hand, Varoufakis is often critical of other leftist populist parties, like Podemos, and some radical Left movements (parts of the German Linke) and other populists (Mélanchon La France insoumise), because of their narrow and nationalistic perspective on issues like immigration and refugees’ rights. In an interview with Varoufakis, who sides with Labour’s political aim to reform the EU, he says: “Any progressive party like Podemos is mistaken when its leaders think that they can stop the European Union’s degeneration process though the electoral process at the level of the nation-state. DiEM25 is a movement. It is not only a Party, a trade union, a think-tank or a conference. It is a surge of European democrats who are moving together to seize control, to put the demos back in democracy at the European level” (Varoufakis 2016d). As Balhorn (2019) acknowledged, the lively exchange of various points of view on immigration and EU politics may be seen as deepening the differences between the already fragmented Left.

6.5

DiEM25’s Popular Identity

While the analysis of DiEM25’s hegemonic strategy makes clear who its “enemies” and allies are, the latter being political institutions, movements and parties which could constitute a political bloc able to reform the EU and national political systems, the investigation into DiEM25’s identity focuses on self-representation and internal cohesion. One main question is the definition of the central demand, what Laclau called the “empty signifier”.

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As has already been pointed out, the “empty signifier” according to Laclau may be the populist leader—in DiEM25 the leader would be Varoufakis—or the people. A possible personalization of the transnational movement is denounced in some discussions about leadership and internal pluralism (Souvlis and Mazzoleni 2016). It is clear that a possible outcome of the mobilization process by the populist movements—from the right or the left—may be the personalization and therefore eventually the leader’s embodiment of the party. This is clear also in Laclau’s formulation of populism, in which the leader unleashes political protest and coordinates the movement’s hegemonic strategy, thereby probably playing the role of an “all-knowing leader” orchestrating semi-enlightened masses (Arditi 2020). If we follow the second option and hence consider the “people” as the “glue” of populism, the issue at stake is what is the space in which people politically act: the region, the nation, the EU? As De Cleen (2017) and Balibar (2012) have noted, the term “people” does not mean the nation, according to DiEM25, or even the state, but rather the democratic demos, which interrelates and works across the nations, acting as a transnational community. This means that any representation of a national and social bond that gathers individuals into a community rooted in a soil and in a nation, protecting its culture and privileges against others, is rejected. People are rather the collective of informed citizens, whose aim is to participate in the construction of a common and equal world (Rancière 2011; Featherstone and Karaliotas 2019). The transnational people are neither a nation, nor a specific class but rather a large group, willing to restore their democratic power—as also in many right-populist representations—and, at the same time, to work for the inclusion of immigrants and refugees in Europe—contrary to the rightist populists (Fanoulis and Guerra 2020). The transnational people are an “actual” image of the existing people as well as a political project, as is made clear in the 2016 manifesto, which states with regard to the former: “we the peoples of Europe have a duty to regain control over our Europe from unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions” (DiEM 2016 manifesto). At the same time, the transnational people are seen as a project when they become the endpoint of a process of democratization of the EU

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institutions, namely the enhancement of citizens’ participation through the creation of institutions elected by European citizens and through a fairer electoral system (Blokker 2019). This collective—the transnational people—opposes reactionary populists on the one hand, and EU technocrats and global elites on the other: DiEM25’s “we” are “the majority suffering in quiet desperation” through austerity; all of those who “doubt that their rulers know what they’re doing but don’t know where to turn; all of those who have lost their faith in politics; the EU’s greatest, harshest critics [who believe that] the return to fortress Germany, to fortress France, to fortress Britain, to fortress everywhere in Europe, is going to make life […] nastier, more brutish, and shorter”; and “every genuine democrat” (Varoufakis 2016b; cf. Panayotu 2017: 10). A successful strategy for the transnational movement is to oppose the EU institutions and the global elites at their spatial level, namely to build a transnational political force and a transnational people to oppose them. The new political spatiality introduced by Varoufakis is one of the most original characteristics of DiEM25, though it is a difficult goal to achieve (see Cisar and Weisskircher in this volume). Apparently the “we” that DiEM25 calls upon goes beyond the nation-states and refers to “the people” at a pan-European level (Panayotu 2017: 10). As Agustín observes, the main question here is: “which demos can be articulated at the European level and how to relate it with the singular demos existing at the national level?” (Agustín 2020: 100). Varoufakis expressly aims at bypassing the institutional dimension and the national level by creating a movement that refuses to have party structures and directly meets and elects its speakers. Here “transnational” is used instead of international, not only because DiEM25’s leaders are chosen bypassing the national state level but also because transnational populism addresses people across national borders. Those “transnational people” as Moffitt (2017) sees it, are portrayed in opposition to the technocratic elites, as in Laclau’s model of populism. In particular they are juxtaposed to the elite primarily along the lines of a down/up antagonism, in which “the transnational people” are discursively constructed as a large powerless group through opposition to the elites. Here, three main elements characterize the political position and orientation of

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this movement: the definition of people not as an “ethnic nation”— as in right-wing populism, but as “constituent political power”—as in Laclau’s representation; the opposition to exclusionary populism, and the defence of refugees’ rights; and the opposition to left-wing and right-wing political forces seeking to leave the EU (see Panayotu 2017). However, as Fanoulis and Guerra (2020: 223) note, DiEM25’s discourse may start transnationally but its political truth can still affect national political outcomes. As regards the construction of a transnational people, as recent research by De Cleen et al. (2020) shows, the movement fails to completely bypass the national level. Even if in the documents and in speeches, people are seen as the “underdogs” against the transnational elites, there is considerable evidence that these people are more international than transnational, and that the national level is hard to bypass. As the authors of the research show, “the employment and the defense of rights remain longly tied to membership to nationstate”. One of the main reasons for the failure of DiEM25 is that the common political imagination tends to identify individuals with national states. Therefore, the quest to strengthen national sovereignty cannot be ignored but has to be discussed and needs to be consciously rediscovered. As Moffit suggests, “despite the fact that we live in a globalized world, the nation-state still maintains primacy in terms of being the central organ of democratic representation and thus the main space for the construction of ‘the people’. There is less need to ‘start from scratch’ in terms of constructing ‘the people’ within national boundaries, because these borders are far more familiar and sedimented in terms of people’s political praxis” (Moffitt 2017: 8). Two difficult tasks are faced by DiEM25: to become a transnational party in a political system where political structure is national, and to create a new political form of identification by overcoming the traditional and layered mindset of national belonging.

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A Historical Perspective for a New Movement

Starting from the arguments developed above, I would like to suggest some further hypotheses about the difficulty—but not impossibility—of the populist left succeeding in the creation of a transnational people and about the dilemmas that the movement faces. One striking ambiguity of left-wing transnational populism has been neglected by researchers: the discrepancy between the openness of political position—the inclusion of many political forces—and the clear affinity that Varoufakis’s discourses have with the traditional international left. This discrepancy can be analysed, as it has been here, by taking into consideration some shortcomings of Laclau’s theoretical approach and by looking at DiEM25 as a partial translation of Laclau’s approach into practical politics. On the one hand, DiEM25 is open to right-wing and leftwing political forces in order to form a chain of equivalence between a “we” that includes many particularities and a “we” open to all genuine democrats. On the other hand, Varoufakis frequently makes clear references to the heritage of the international left when he for example affirms that “the Left … has traditionally opposed the bourgeois belief in a one-to-one relationship between a nation and a sovereign parliament … DiEM25 therefore, by calling for a Pan-European campaign of disobedience against traditional elites aligns to the Left’s international approach” (Varoufakis 2016c). Here, a clear discrepancy between the new, populist transnational approach and the old international leftist approach becomes clear. On the one hand, Varoufakis appeals to a traditional international people, historically formed in the tradition of the international left, while, on the other hand, he claims to be overcoming the traditional left– right opposition as well as traditional party politics. In other words, the leader tries to appeal to a post-ideological political constellation, when he seeks to attract “all democrats”, from all different positions. One could say that transnational left populism is trapped in a dilemma that makes it difficult to create a leftist “transnational people”: it appeals to the traditional leftist “people” formed historically by the international left, but at

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the same time, wishes to go beyond the left and offer a different kind of politics juxtaposed to that of the traditional parties. There is no doubt that this discrepancy can be partly explained by the historical background to the emergence of left-wing populism, and by the 1989 crisis as well as the crisis of the EU, which have to be still researched and examined in sufficient depth by the political left. Rightwing forces have not had to face a recent political crisis: their political crisis started right after the Second World War. At the moment, there are some new models of right-wing politics, which distance themselves from fascism and national socialism. These models slowly evolved and, on the one hand, came to adopt a reactionary nativist and/or neo-liberal approach, while, on the other hand, we have witnessed the foundation of a new Right which simultaneously praises differences and the idea of the separate and exclusionary development of civilizations (Rooduijn 2017). Such developments still have not happened on the Left. The discrepancy remaining between the Left’s appeal to the exploited masses and its identification with a post-ideological movement can throw light on some shortcomings of Laclau’s hegemonic theory and of DiEM25’s hegemonic praxis. Laclau’s oscillation between, on the one hand, a strategic conception of new political hegemony from the Left and, on the other, the praise of populism as the key to understanding politics, may be related to a general dilemma that the Left is facing and, in particular, to DiEM25’s ambivalence between its leftist political roots and a populist catch-all approach to politics. On this point, the definition of the “antagonist” of transnational populism may also reveal some shortcomings in its ideological roots and position: is DiEM25 a reformist or a revolutionary force? Does it oppose the economic and/or the political system? These questions are even more relevant if we accept that political positions have a history that matters. Politics is history and takes place in history. As Stuart Hall stated, “society is not a totally open discursive field” (Hall 1986: 56). Practices and habits are sedimented over time matter in political praxis. This means in particular two things. Firstly, that the process of democratic inclusion presupposes a choice for democracy or against it, and therefore an idea of populism as something that goes beyond right-wing and left-wing visions of politics “eludes

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the question whether there are more or less legitimate forms of articulating hegemony and populism” (Valdivielso 2017). In other words, leftist populism has to side with or against certain political traditions— the liberal-democratic tradition, the post-Marxist tradition and the populist tradition. Secondly, forms of material reproduction, the forms of previous ideological positions and hegemonies remain part of political discourse and must be taken seriously by political agents and movements. The mobilization of “people” is not only a voluntaristic act, but always refers to a historical context and to processes of social objectivization and subjectivity construction. In the early visions of radical democracy developed by Laclau and Mouffe in “Hegemony and socialist strategy”, the reference to the categories of articulation and power position were central, contrary to Laclau’s and Mouffe’s later works. In other words, both in Laclau’s and Mouffe’s theories and in the political movements that took account of them, the tension between a strategy to reform the Left and, on the contrary, to enhance populism, as well as the ambiguity with regard to the praise of democracy and the defence of liberalism, are not resolved. These contradictions throw light on DiEM25’s identity dilemma, between being, on the one hand, a classical leftist movement that represents the demands of the exploited, the underdog, the subaltern, or, on the other hand, a new post-ideological force, enhancing the politics of difference and going beyond the traditional forms of representation. The transnational movement’s indeterminacy, its flexibility, which may attract all those disenchanted and confused with politics, may become a problem in the long run, because the internal differences may possibly become centripetal forces leading to a fragmentation: conflicting issues of sex, race, ideology, religion are bound to resurface at some point if they are not consciously discussed and managed (Aslanidis 2018: 458). This is even more the case when the possible conflict between the politics of equality and the politics of difference is not openly debated in the movement. In fact, wider reflection on contemporary political history may throw light on the dilemmas that all political movements are experiencing. As Nancy Fraser astutely pointed out, the political field is now polarized between a progressive neoliberalism and a reactionary populism. A “perverse political alignment”, namely the alliance of mainstream currents of

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new social movements and high-end symbolic and service-based business sectors has created a new background against which political forces have to take sides. The identification of progress with meritocracy “gradually replaces the non-expansive, anti-hierarchical, egalitarian, class-sensitive anti-capitalist understanding of emancipation that had flourished in the 1960s and 1970s” (Fraser 2017). The only political response to this new political constellation has been a reactionary populism centred on the protection of national communities and solidarity between social classes aiming to protect or fearing the loss of their status. A “progressive populism” may be a possible answer to this political transformation: the combination of emancipation and social protection—cosmopolitanism from below. Transnational populism could take the opportunity to fill the space left for a new progressive force and consciously create a utopian project: “to show the voters that there is an alternative, even within the rules designed by the establishment to further the interests of the top 1%. … This is the only way the left can escape its confines and build a broad progressive coalition” (Varoufakis 2019).

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Varoufakis Y. (2016a) Varoufakis Interview with Barnets, 2016, Another Europe Is Possible, 28 May, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europemake-it/anthony-barnett-in-conversation-with-yanis-varou/. Varoufakis Y. (2016b) Speech at the DiEM’s Launch Event at Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre, 9 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkWwUG 0p89Y. Varoufakis Y. (2016c) Europe’s Left After Brexit, https://www.jacobinmag.com/ 2016/09/european-union-strategy-democracy-yanis-varoufakis-diem25/. Varoufakis Y. (2016d) Europe and the Specter of Democracy, https://diem25. org/europe-and-the-specter-of-democracy/. Varoufakis Y. (2019) Our Plan for a European Spring, https://www.yanisvaro ufakis.eu/2019/03/07/our-plan-for-a-european-spring-diem25/. Venturi F. (1961) Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, translated by Frances Haskell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

7 Left Populism and ‘Another Europe’: Europeanization, International Sovereigntism and Transnationalism Óscar García Agustín

7.1

Introduction

A few days before the elections in Madrid on the 4 May, Pablo Iglesias, former vice-president of the Spanish government and candidate for president of the region, gave an interview to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Iglesias claimed that: ‘Not even the leader of the biggest Communist party in the West, Enrico Berlinguer, was able to reach what I have reached: a Marxist in government of the Atlantic Alliance’ (Nicastro 2021). Besides the provocative nature of the statement, it is interesting that Iglesias compares himself with Berlinguer, the very popular Italian politician and one of the founders of the reformist Eurocommunism. The formation of a coalition government between the social democratic party PSOE and Unidas Podemos raised some concerns about Ó. G. Agustín (B) Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_7

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the transformative role that Podemos could play in Spanish politics. Podemos was born on the basis of a strong rejection of the parties of the establishment (both the PSOE and the conservative Popular Party, PP) and responding to social and political discontent. Iglesias had already referred to Berlinguer in relation to the agreement for a coalition government; at that time, the leader of Podemos explained Togliatti’s thesis of creating a party of the Italian people and not of the Italian working class. The thesis, developed by Berlinguer, would increase the Italian Communist Party’s (PCI) options to be part of the government. Apart from the move from a focus on the working class to one on the people (which can be applied to Podemos, especially in the first years), the comparison with Berlinguer is made to highlight that Podemos is really making a difference and not becoming a ‘domesticated’ left, meaning a left prone to accommodate power and become a party of the status quo (Gil 2019). However, the debates on the reformist left (extendible to Syriza after entering into power) also with regard to the creation of a popular party—in the sense of being transversal—are not the only aspects which are relevant in referring to Eurocommunism. The portmanteau neologism ‘Eurocommunism’ was coined at the end of the 70s outside the political parties themselves which, albeit initially skeptical, ended up adopting the term (Claudín 1977). Eurocommunism emerged from the meeting of three communist parties: Berlinguer’s PCI, Santiago Carrillo’s Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and Georges Marchais’s French Communist Party (PCF). In the middle of a crisis of capitalism, the three leaders aimed to distance themselves from the Soviet Union and ‘real socialism.’ In this regard, the use of the prefix ‘Euro’ did not refer to the whole of Europe (Eastern Europe was excluded) and not even to Western Europe (it was mainly a Southern European phenomenon) but it implied that the Eurocommunist parties were not subject to the communist pyramid dominated by Moscow and signaled their adhesion to Europe as space of freedom and democracy (Buton 2011). However, the three parties were not capable of coordinating a common European line of political action. It was a way of imagining Europe as opposed to the Soviet Union which enabled the formulation of a renewed communism within the European project. The

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rejection of the power of Moscow and the appeal to Europe are complemented by their focus on local and national politics, since international politics should be rooted in the specificities of local and national politics. Another crisis, the economic crisis of 2008, was also followed by the emergence of a new left which likewise aspired to win power. It was labeled, mainly outside the parties themselves, as left populism, although the leaders of the parties did not adopt such a category, and it was led by Southern European countries, mainly Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and later La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) in France. Those parties distanced themselves from the existing radical left (i.e., anti-capitalist, communist or former communist parties) in order to become transversal parties by appealing to the majority (the people), not to the working class, and not proposing a straightforward anti-capitalist program. The economic crisis was closely attached to the European Union (EU) project. This entailed that the left populist parties should address the European question. Although the nation-state was essential to think about political alternatives, the consequences of the crisis should be responded to at the European level. Thus, different ways of imagining Europe are projected to create an alternative to the existing EU and the impact of its policies in the different countries. Different visions are at stake, and not exempt from conflicts between them. Besides, the reimagination of Europe from a left populist perspective changed drastically after the Greek government, led by Alexis Tsipras, accepted the conditions imposed by the European Troika, formed by the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). My objective in this chapter is to show how left populism articulated two different projects for Europe, containing some of the main elements of populism (the people vs. the elite, the claim to sovereignty). While the first one can be named international sovereigntism, since it promotes the coalition of several parties in defense of their national sovereignties, the second one is transnationalism, consisting of shaping a transnational political subject, beyond the aggregation of national sovereignties. Before discussing these dimensions, I will pay attention to the Europeanization of left populism, previous to the ‘surrender’ of Syriza, to prove the importance of imagining Europe to forge and connect European left populism.

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The differences with Eurocommunism are many, in addition to those already mentioned, but what I find interesting is that the European left needed to elaborate a political project in which the question of Europe was inevitable to define its own project, in this case left populism.

7.2

Populism Beyond the Nation-State?

Populism, in general, has a problem in materializing a political project that is not restricted to the limits of the nation-state. Despite the internationalist character of the left (see Chiantera-Stutte’s chapter in this volume), populism is many times in tension with internationalism. Globalization has made the articulation of political projects more complicated regarding the political subject, ‘the people,’ and the object, sovereignty. I would like to briefly mention a number of theories which reflect on this complexity. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) in Empire already talked about a new type of sovereignty, imperial sovereignty, which makes both domination and resistance global, while state sovereignty would not be a solution. They reject the possibility of recovering nation-state sovereignty because of globalization (Empire, according to Hardt and Negri) has erased the division between inside and outside. Thus, sovereignty cannot be constructed through the dialectical opposition between inside (the nation-state territory) and outside. They reject likewise that the people— the political subject related to the formation of modern sovereignty—can be the political subject of globalization (the counter-Empire). ‘The people’ is constructed through antagonism with an outside (the elite), by means of a transcendent operation consisting in reducing the plurality of social subjectivities into a unified entity, namely ‘the people.’ Hardt and Negri proposed the multitude to grasp both the times of global hegemony and the multiplicity of social subjectivities. James Bohman (2010) shares the idea that nation-states are challenged in times of globalization. In his case, because states are too big to generate loyalty and legitimacy and too small to solve a diversity of social problems. Bohman identifies a number of tendencies within the

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state (i.e., communitarianism to renew the social consensus and participatory democracy to increase decentralization) and beyond the state (i.e., cosmopolitanism, which support a supranational order). Thinking beyond the nation-state, and moving to the transnational space, cannot be done on the basis of the idea of demos, a unified ‘will of the people.’ When moving from the national to the transnational level, it is necessary then to think of demoi, as a plural subject. In opposition to the demos, there is no need for a sovereign for each of the plural demoi, since the objective is not to create a unified global demos or a centralized global sovereign. In other words, the shift from the national to the transnational requires a shift from a unified and singular subject to a plural one. Despite the differences between Hardt and Negri and Bohman, all agree on a more complex scenario in which the national level is not the only space of sovereignty, since the global or transnational is shaping new spaces in which sovereignty is being redefined (which, in Hardt and Negri’s version, results in the insignificance of national sovereignty). In addition, complexity affects the political subject which is characterized in both perspectives by its plurality: the multitude and the demoi. These approaches are quite challenging to left populists: how to combine the defense of sovereignty with the increasing processes of globalization (or even global sovereignty)? and how to claim that ‘the people’ is the main political subject when moving to the transnational level? I would add a third question: is left populism, as it happens with populism in general, the opposite pole of cosmopolitanism, as the ideology of globalism? The relationship between populism and globalization adds more levels of complexity to the already uneasy relation between demos and ethnos (Stavrakakis et al. 2017). The frequently overlapping categories of ‘nation’ and ‘the people’ can become almost identical, as ‘the people’ may refer to ethnos, a cultural community preceding the political community, or simply people-as-nation. In opposition with this identification of people with ethnicity—characteristic of right populism but also present in some cases in left populism—the identification of the people with democracy, people-as-demos (De Cleen 2017), is a prerequisite for overcoming the culturalized and ethnicized version of people. If left populism is defined by the vertical axis between the bottom and the top, the operation appears as not so complicated: the people is to oppose the

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transnational elite, i.e., the Troika, the European Commission, the European elites. But who is ‘the people’ here? If it is the ‘Greek people,’ how can one avoid the mix of people as demos and ethnos? And if it is the European people, who makes up that people and how could one move from a singular to a plural subject, ‘the peoples’? Hardt and Negri warn of the risk of returning to the state to solve the new global conflict between the so-called losers and winners of globalization. Antagonism would be both against the transnational elites (the winners of globalization) and against those who reclaim the nation-state (as protection for the losers of globalization). However, such a conceptualization entails a difficulty for left populism: the claim for popular sovereignty is anchored in the national territory. Although a transnational adversary can be recognized, ‘the people’ as a political subject claiming popular sovereignty remains mainly national. The risk here is that popular sovereignty becomes equated with national sovereignty. Is the defense of the interests of the Greek people struggle for popular or national sovereignty? When moving to the transnational space, which concrete form would global sovereignty require so that it can be claimed by a political subject which is not the people? There are different ways of responding to this from a left populist perspective: strengthening popular sovereignty within the framework of national sovereignty against the transnational elite, or transnationalizing the people as a political subject, as an alternative to the transnational elite, while relegating the nation-state to a secondary status. I will refer later to these positions as international sovereigntism and transnationalism, respectively. Besides the complications derived from thinking about ‘the people’ and ‘popular sovereignty’ beyond the nation-state, I consider it relevant to refer to the debate between populism and cosmopolitanism, the parameters of which determine the transnational understanding of populism. The dichotomy between cosmopolitanism and nationalism has been gradually replaced by the one between cosmopolitanism and populism (or a combination of nationalism and populism). When looking at globalization, the political conflict would not be left versus right (or bottom versus top) but rather populism versus cosmopolitanism (Rovira 2017). Populism would be the flip side of cosmopolitanism and a reaction against the unequal distribution of global benefits which

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generates the division between the winners and the losers of globalization (Costas 2016). This framework is problematic for left populism for several reasons. Firstly, it blurs the division between left and right, so any attempt at left populism would be impossible and defined under the same premises as right populism in their opposition to cosmopolitanism. Secondly, the interpretation of cosmopolitanism as a top-down project would legitimate the free market and global neoliberalism as the only economic model. Finally, if pro-migrant policies and international cooperation are only considered from the perspective of a cosmopolitanism from above, it opens up the political space for a right populist opposition where migration and multiculturalism are perceived as phenomena promoted by the elites. The problem regarding the relation between cosmopolitanism and populism consists in the fact that populism, and by extension left populism, tends to become confined to the national borders. Populism as an idea hinders imagining the people beyond borders as well as popular sovereignty on a transnational scale. The emergence of left populism proves, however, the importance of a project—not without contradictions—which seeks to connect national politics to the EU. Left populist parties have activated different imaginations of Europe to counteract neoliberalism and develop ‘popular’ projects. In the following, I will discuss the process of Europeanization of left populism, which is characterized by an approximation of national to a European politics and by the translation of national politics into a European one. The first phase of Europeanization ended with Tsipras’ political u-turn. After Syriza’s failed attempt to implement a more democratic agenda while in power, two options have been developed by left populism: International Sovereigntism and Transnationalism.

7.3

The Europeanization of Left Populism

When left populism is considered merely as a reaction against Europeanization which is understood as the way in which European policies, particularly austerity measures, were implemented at the domestic level, all the dynamics and initiatives by left populists offer in terms of a

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European solution will be not recognized. Euroscepticism, as opposition to the powers of the EU, became mainstream across Europe in the aftermath of the economic crisis (Brack and Startin 2015), even though parties such Syriza and Podemos have been labeled as ‘soft Eurosceptic.’ Besides, populism, beyond its diversity, has been predominantly treated as a democratic malaise and a social disease threatening European democracy. Populism is seen as opposed, in a dichotomic and Manichean manner, to democracy, pluralism and even Europe (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis 2013). When left populism is reduced to Eurosceptic populism a dual problem is created: first, left populism is reduced to a rejection of Europe and as an understanding of the EU as a space for doing politics in which merely national politics matter, and, second, left populism is portrayed as a threat to democracy (reducing this populism to a unified, singular phenomenon). However, as warned by della Porta et al. (2017), the increasing dissent about Europe coming from the European periphery, cannot be properly analyzed by means of an over-stretched concept of Euroscepticism, as in the dichotomy between Europhile versus Eurosceptic actors. It would be more appropriate, they add, to understand the articulation of critical Europeanism, as expressed in the context of the legitimacy crisis of the EU. This critical awareness is in continuity with the claims for a democratic Europe (see Scharenberg’s and Moskvina’s chapters in this volume), as formulated by the global justice movement. On the other hand, left populism, which promotes radical political solutions to strengthen democracy, is not comparable to the xenophobic and racist approach of right populism (Markou 2017). Left populism in this initial phase, as it manifested itself between 2012 and 2015, is neither about giving up Europe or the possibility of imagining another Europe, nor about adopting an exclusionary profile, comparable to right populism. Here, I refer to Europeanization to account for the attempts of left populism to promote a social Europe in contrast to the predominant neoliberal model, which also facilitates a change in domestic politics. In this distinct phase, Syriza played a leading role.

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In their analysis of Greek populism in the period 2009–2011, Sofia Vasilopoulou, Daphne Halikiopoulou and Theofanis Exadaktylo highlight that the Greek crisis was the result of both exogenous and endogenous factors: global capitalism, the Eurozone and the external pressure of the Troika, and, internally, its cultural, historical and institutional development which is best understood as ‘populist democracy,’ following the definition by Pappas, as ‘an illiberal democratic system defined by the division of society along a single “populist” cleavage’—that is, “dividing the good people from some evil establishment” (Vasilopoulou et al. 2014: 391). In the time (2009–2011), Syriza was a minor parliamentary force with 13 MPs (4.6% of the votes in 2009) and as shown by Vasilopoulou et al. (2014), surprisingly barely blamed the transnational elites, since the party mainly targeted Pasok and New Democracy (ND), and the collaboration between the two parties and external parties. This domestic focus changed and became more European with the quick electoral growth of Syriza and its strong reaction against the politics of austerity. The European elections in 2014 reflected the Europeanization of Syriza but also of left populism, with the surprising rise of Podemos, and for the first time achieved political representation in the European Parliament. Syriza’s program combined the national and European scale, ‘We vote for Greece. We vote for another Europe,’ and introduced the populist divide between the Greek people and a conglomerate of elites. The elections were an opportunity to show the incompatibility between the Greek government and the ‘popular will’ and to show the European people that there was an alternative to austerity which could trigger a wave of pan-European change (Katsambekis 2019). Previously, the Party of the European Left (PEL) had made a move to Europeanize leftwing responses to the EU of austerity, which were symbolized by the figure of Tsipras. The PEL decided to nominate Tsipras, then leader of the opposition in Greece, as candidate for the president of the European Commission in 2013. Tsipras had already expressed some months before in Madrid, invited by Left United, the necessity of unifying the Southern European Left against the Troika. Against an emphasis on the individual responsibility of each country, Tsipras underlined the strength of unification as the only successful alternative:

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They believe that we are weak because they are confronting us separately country by country, people by people, but we have decided that the union of our forces, of the South of Europe, [will] make them realize that they are the weak ones in this economic war of class against the peoples and that we are the strong ones and we will come out victorious. (Tsipras, in Del Pino 2013a)

This idea of unifying the South European left echoed that of Eurocommunism, particularly when we think that among the promoters of the initiative were, besides Tsipras, the president of the PEL and general secretary of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, and the leader of United Left, Cayo Lara. The difference is that Tsipras’ left populism differed in many senses from the other communist parties, which later were replaced by other left populist parties: La France Insoumise and Podemos. The formalization of Tsipras’ candidacy aimed to forge an alternative Europe, shaped by the South, by questioning the functioning of the EU institutions and the politics of austerity. It was about finding a space between uncritical Europeanism and the nationalist backlash. Joan Josep Nuet, from the Catalan branch of United Left, articulated this goal as follows: ‘We must elaborate a new European project […] In the PEL we want to raise the flag of Europeanism; Europe is worthwhile, but another Europe’ (in Del Pino 2013b). The candidacy was symbolic since Tsipras would not stand a chance of being appointed president of the European Commission, but it reflects the attempt to forge another Europe. Sandro Mezzadra and Antonio Negri assessed Tsipras’ candidacy and the opportunity associated with the European Parliament elections in 2014 very positively, in that it could open up a debate in the left about the necessity of developing a fully political European discourse instead of limiting the scope and interests of the left parties to the narrow frame of national politics. Albeit a minority political organization (just over 4% of votes and 3 MEPs), The Other Europe with Tsipras (L’Altra Europa con Tsipras, AET) implied that an Italian organization indicated Tsipras as their European leader to fight against austerity (O’Connor 2014). The Europeanization of this Italian party was an attempt to rally toward a different Europe, based

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on the solidarity between southern European countries in which a European leadership became more important than prioritizing the national interests. This can be seen as the first step to move from demos to demoi as a condition to think about European politics as distinct from national politics, but also as a way of overcoming the geographical division between Southern and North-Western Europe with a new divide between class and capital (in a left sense) or the peoples and the economic elites (from a more populist perspective). Tsipras defended his candidacy by quoting Jean Monnet’s idea of uniting men, and not forming a coalition of states, as the quintessence of the process of European integration. To give form to ‘the people’ (uniting men), Tsipras utilized the logic of equivalence (articulating diverse identities which share an antagonist relation) to show that a European alliance and solidarity, bringing down the North– South divide, is possible against the dominance of neoliberalism: ‘We juxtapose the solidarity of the young, the working people, the pensioners and the unemployed to the solidarity of capital that the current neoliberal management of the crisis materializes. It is only this solidarity, which could break through the dichotomy North–South, “le mur de l’ argent”’ (Tsipras 2013). Syriza won the European elections in Greece by nearly four percentage points over ND, led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Tsipras interpreted his victory as a rejection of austerity politics and a turning point toward a solidary Europe: ‘The message is that the disastrous policy of austerity must be terminated. All European nations must invest in democracy, growth, social cohesion and solidarity’ (in Chapple 2014). The same night Podemos gained the mass media’s full attention in Spain by obtaining 5 MEPs. Despite this sense of change, the right won the European Parliament elections overall by far. Both Tsipras and Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, used the EU as a temporary platform to come back to national politics later. When Tsipras won the Greek elections in 2015, and Podemos became the second most popular party by voting intention according to some polls, Europeanization was not being produced by moving to the EU as a battlefield but rather by taking national power and expecting to change EU austerity politics from within national arenas.

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The idea of the ‘domino effect’ in Southern Europe, following Syriza’s rise to power, emerged from the possible scenario of left-wing parties gaining power in times of weakened social democratic parties. It can also be said that the radical left, communist or former communist parties, faced some difficulties in handling the new scenario after the victory of Syriza. Iglesias defended the ‘centrality’ of Podemos by raising the question: ‘Do we want to be left-wing or do we want to win the elections?’ Mélenchon stated the necessity of attracting middle-class voters (Ortiz 2015) and would later initiate the shift from the Front de Gauche (The Left Front) to La France Insoumise. While both Spanish politicians and the mass media tried to explain that the Greek situation could not be compared with the Spanish one, Podemos saw the conditions for a larger change since Syriza proved that it was possible to win elections and govern. When Iglesias talked to a crowd in Puerta del Sol in January 2015, the square occupied four years earlier by the 15 M movement, he quoted in Greek ‘the wind of change starts to blow in Greece’ and named all the achievements made by the Greek government led by Syriza. The new way of doing politics reflected the possibility of changing Europe. Who said that it is not possible? Who said that a government cannot change things? Today Greece has a government of change. […] In Greece their delegates have lost. Delegate Samarás has lost and delegate Rajoy, who went to Athens to support the government of failure, has lost. In Greece, the Greek people has won finally. We dream but we take our dreams very seriously. […] I know that it is difficult to govern. But those who dream seriously are able to change things and today in Greece there is a serious government, a responsible government, a government that works for its people. (Iglesias 2015)

The Greek referendum in July 2015 intensified the essence of left populism: the Greek people versus the European elites and social Europe versus neoliberal Europe. A considerable wave of European solidarity supported the ‘No’ vote against the new austerity measures proposed by the creditors. The popular victory was celebrated beyond the Greek borders but, contradicting the results, Tsipras signed a third memorandum which was perceived as a capitulation to the Troika. Arguing that

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there was no alternative due to unbalanced power and lack of international support, Syriza lost any possibility of a domino effect and affected even the versatility of Podemos that was promoting the renegotiation of the debt and articulated the demands of other left parties against the Troika. This phase of Europeanization, consisting of a left populist strategy toward the European Parliament (EP), first, and the influence of Syriza in other European parties, later, ended with the drastic change of Syriza in relation to EU austerity politics. However, the contradictions about how to change the EU from within and from the perspective of one sole left populist party in government became evident with the acceptance of the third memorandum against ‘the people’s will.’ The left subsequently had to reconsider how to imagine Europe under different premises and how populism could articulate the antagonist relation between ‘the people’ and the elites and which role popular sovereignty should play within it. Two different initiatives emerged to overcome the defeat of Syriza: Plan B and DiEM25. None of them including Syriza within their initiatives, despite being member of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL). Both differed in their interpretation of the shortcomings of the Europeanization of left populism led by Syriza. While Plan B pursued to reinforce national sovereignty against the power of the EU, DiEM25 pretends to renew the EU transnationally and redirect it toward the European people. These conceptions lead to different ways of imagining Europe: international sovereigntism and transnationalism.

7.4

International Sovereigntism

The incapacity of Syriza to change the neoliberal logic within Europe showed the difficulty of changing the EU and of doing it starting from one single country. International sovereigntism acknowledges both difficulties and proposes the strength of national sovereignty, enhanced through European cooperation and aimed against EU interference. International sovereigntism can be related to the initiative called Plan B, launched in 2015 and to the formation of the European coalition ‘Now the People!’ mobilized for the European Parliament elections in

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2019. The aim was to establish an alliance between left parties which, respecting the internal diversity of actors and objectives, is capable of imagining a social Europe as an alternative to the neoliberal EU. The foundation of Plan B in 2015 was presented through a joint statement signed by prominent left politicians: Oskar Lafontaine (the former leader of Die Linke in Germany), Stefano Fassina (an Italian deputy and economist), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (the leader of the French Left Front), Zoe Konstantopoulou (a former deputy and parliamentary speaker in Greece) and Yanis Varoufakis (a former Minister of Finance in Greece), who later distanced himself from it and developed his own alternative, DiEM25. The objective was to create a political space of discussion beyond the European Parliament, excluding Syriza, since the agenda pointed to institutional and political goals, such as the renegotiation of the European treaties and accountability for the Eurogroup, and to the inclusion and participation of social movements. Two Plan As are opposed: Plan A, sustained by the left-wing initiative, was to work in each country as well as together throughout Europe, to renegotiate the European Treaties, while the Plan A of the ‘majority of the governments representing the EU oligarchy’ consisted of: ‘Not to yield to the European people’s demand for democracy and to use brutality to end their resistance’ (Plan B 2015). The EU’s Plan B (ejecting Greece from the Eurozone) would make the situation impossible for the countries rejecting the EU’s blackmail and that is why it was to be contested by an alternative Plan B which was to appeal to the majority of Europeans and was to rely on a technical preparation in order to offer a realistic alternative. However, the specificities of Plan B were not formulated from the start and remained subject of discussion (without agreement) in the later summits. The objective of Plan B was to enhance transnational arenas for discussion, which aimed to elaborate a Plan A and B beyond the European Parliament, without counting on all the members of the GUE/NGL, in particular due to internal disagreements within the group over the EU, that is, between Syriza and Die Linke. The summits took place in different countries: in France in 2016, in Spain in 2016, in Denmark in 2016, in Italy in 2017, in Portugal in 2017, in Greece in 2018 and in Sweden in 2019. Although the summits were open to intellectuals

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and members of civil society, politicians played a leading role. There was no clear leadership, however, despite the prominence acquired by Mélenchon and Konstantopoulou, which affected the final objective, remaining vague and moving between a radical reform of the EU and abandoning the EU project to find other forms of international solidarity and cooperation. The main characteristic of Plan B is the combination of a common, plural and vague agenda with the priorities of national agendas. This was reflected in how the host for each summit influenced the agenda. It became more Eurosceptic in France, less so in Spain and more directly anti-EU in Denmark. The changes in approaches showed the prominence of the national perspective and the coexistence of different tendencies: Podemos was in favor of making social movements more present, the Nordic countries defended ‘Eurexit,’ and voices such as Portugal and France promoted a sharper critical tone against EU. In comparison with the Europeanization of Syriza and left populism, Plan B moved beyond the Southern union, since the traditional Nordic Euroscepticism met the newer version articulated by Southern European countries (Agustín 2017). Nonetheless, the prioritization of national agendas within the European framework is connected with the fierce defense of state sovereignty against the EU and the abandonment of its treaties within (Plan A) or outside the EU (Plan B). Mélenchon formulated precisely the importance of sovereignty in opposition to what he calls ‘authoritarian liberalism’: The sovereignty of the people, its political sovereignty, is the challenge of our time. For this sovereignty runs against today’s capitalism: a financial and transnational capitalism that can only develop precisely by removing rules and controls. But the source of all regulation is the law, and thus citizens. Today, liberalism is a clearly authoritarian and antidemocratic current. The European Union’s version of sovereignty is the limited kind formulated by Leonid Brezhnev in his time. Mr. Juncker summed it up when he said that there is “no democracy outside the European treaties.” On the contrary, no democracy is possible within these treaties, as we saw in Greece and in Cyprus. (Mélenchon 2018)

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Sovereignty is threatened here by global capitalism and the only solution is to protect people through regulation. The notion of popular sovereignty is quite close to the one of national sovereignty since it is the national community that is protected against transnational capitalism. The divisions of peoples versus oligarchs and sovereignty versus transnational capitalism highlight the incompatibility between the European treaties and democracy. Therefore, the only option for having democracy is to move away from the existing European treaties or, if this is not possible, from the EU as such, as it has become an expression of authoritarian liberalism. The consequences of Plan B are mainly the following three: a return to the nation-state, international cooperation and imagining Europe instead of the EU. Pablo Bustinduy from Podemos, recognized that it was necessary to accumulate material power by winning national elections before concentrating the efforts on a larger debate about reforming Europe (in Bonet 2018). Therefore, Plan B is internationalist insomuch as it promotes the cooperation between sovereign countries, and is not grounded in supranational powers. This preference for international cooperation explains why Plan B imagines a Europe that does not correspond with the EU, although it does not concretize what such a Europe would entail in reality. The shift away from the EU is explained by Nikolaj Villumsen, from the Red–Green Alliance, in relation to the difference between Plan B and DiEM25: The argument is, in part, a critique of the initiative DiEM25 which exclusively sets forward institutional demands, not taking their point of departure in the specific needs of the people for solidary politics. […] We have usually spoken more about procedures and institutions rather than social and economic change. There is a certain connection between politics and institutions but it is not arbitrary where the focus is placed. The left-wing focus should be about fighting for improvements for the ordinary people’s everyday. It is essential that our focus is to formulate positive and progressive demands and to mobilize people. (in Rohde and Kjeller 2017)

In opposition to DiEM25, Plan B entails shifting from institutional politics to a wider understanding of politics, rooted in what Villumsen calls ‘everyday politics.’ The left populism of Plan B differs from the one of

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DiEM25 in framing the EU’s institutions and treaties as contrary to the interests of the ordinary people. Like sovereignty, politics for ordinary people is only possible outside the current EU treaties. As the EP elections in 2019 got closer, Plan B took shape in the alliance ‘Now the People!’ It formalized the connection between Southern European (La France Insoumise from France, Podemos from Spain and Left Bloc from Portugal) and Nordic countries (Red–Green Alliance from Denmark, Left Party from Sweden and Left Alliance from Finland), transcending the former scope of a unified Southern Europe. Despite the continuity with the ideas of international cooperation and a critique of the EU, the fact of being an electoral alliance made it possible for: (a) the transnational agenda to become more concrete: climate change, tax havens and social dumping; and (b) discursive articulation to become clearer than before, that is, the ideas resulting from the Plan B summits. Indeed, ‘Now the People!’ adopted a determined populist rhetoric by marking a clear divide between the people and the European elites. The goal was to save Europe from political (both center and farright) extremism and economic neoliberalism. European left populism is presented as an alternative to ordinary people whose disenchantment can turn them into potential far-right voters: Meanwhile, ordinary people are subjected to economic insecurity and precarity. While the political elite sips champagne in hotels in Strasbourg and Brussels, economic inequality in Europe is escalating. It should come as no surprise then that people are losing faith in the system. And too often people turn to the extreme Right for answers. (Now the People! 2019)

The electoral moment enhanced an international-popular logic, beyond the national-popular (Agustín 2020). ‘The people’ by ‘Now the People!’ is heterogeneous, not only in the sense of including different nationalities, but also of being intersectional and referring to refugees, women and LGBTI communities. Compared with Plan B, ‘Now the People!’ concretizes transnational policies embedded, critically though, within the EU framework, and develops a more articulated populist discourse.

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However, the dependence on the electoral conjuncture and the modest results (14 MEPs) limits the potential to promote a larger European change.

7.5

Transnationalism

A few months after Plan B, a new initiative was launched: DiEM25. Both initiatives shared in the beginning some of the same participants and the objectives were apparently quite similar. Later, the two initiatives took clearly separated paths and became incompatible even. The main difference is that Plan B attempts to organize international cooperation, based on the defense of state sovereignty, to combat transnational powers, whereas DiEM25 aims to create a transnational political subject to counteract the increasing political and economic power of the transnational elites. The recovery of the nation-state is replaced by the formation of a transnational alternative where the sovereignty of the peoples is more important than the one of the states. For this reason, I denominate this type of left populist formation transnationalism. DiEM25 does not rely on preexisting political organizations and was born as an ambivalent organization, defining itself as a ‘political movement’ or simply ‘movement’ working as a network of movements. In any case, as co-founder Sre´cko Horvat explained, in the beginning, DiEM25 was not party, nor an organization or a think tank (in Oltermann 2016). The hybrid nature of the organization remains clear when DiEM25 supports other movements and tries to implement its local organizations but also when it acts as a weak public or lobby, when attempting to influence policy-making in concrete areas, and as a think tank when pursuing advocacy. DiEM25’s actions take place outside the EU institutions like Plan B, but without having representation in the European Parliament. However, also in contrast with the Plan B, the aspiration is to change the EU. The extra-institutional dimension allows DiEM25 to elaborate more radical demands to democratize the EU than if it had been within the EU institutions. The formulation of a foundational manifesto, making the program and objectives explicit, and the leading role taken by Varoufakis, aim at

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converting DiEM25 into a coherent project from a discursive perspective. Given that it is not rooted in national politics, Varoufakis acquired a transnational position as leader that enables him to play a similar role to national populist leaders but at the transnational level. It can be said that Tsipras had a similar function when nominated as candidate for the presidency of the Commission, but Tsipras emphasized the coexistence of the Greek and European identities and projects in his person. Varoufakis assumes the voices of the European peoples and the transnational demands to change the EU. Taken together, the leadership, the antagonist relationship between the people and the elite are the basis for the articulation of a populist discourse (Panayotu 2017). In the manifesto, ‘The EU will be democratized. Or it will disintegrate,’ it is clear that it is still possible to imagine another Europe within EU but it would require a process of democratization driven by the people. This idea generates an opposition between those who will bring the change (the people) and those who try to hinder it (the elite): We, the peoples of Europe, have a duty to regain control over our Europe from unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions. We come from every part of the continent and are united by different cultures, languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours, gender identities, faiths and conceptions of the good society. We are forming DiEM25 intent on moving from a Europe of ‘We the Governments’, and ‘We the Technocrats’, to a Europe of ‘We, the peoples of Europe’. (DiEM25, 2016)

The antagonist relation between the powers that be and the power of the people (see Panayotu’s chapter in this volume) moved to the transnational sphere and is complemented by a pluralistic understanding of ‘the people’ that is not defined by its belonging to national territory. In this sense, DiEM25 ‘constantly endeavors to construct a transnational political space and become a transnational force able to offer democratic change in Europe’ (De Cleen et al. 2020: 162). While Plan B and DiEM25 share the same enemy (neoliberalism and the far-right), the transnationalism of DiEM25 is critical with any type of return to nation-state as the main solution and rejects ‘Lexit’ as a desirable option.

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The shift toward global sovereignty leads DiEM25 to assume that the response must be transnational. The alternative to the EU is a panEuropean coalition for democratizing Europe. This does not mean that the national level becomes irrelevant. As stated by Varoufakis, ‘the key to DiEM25’s approach is that we refuse to prioritise the national over the transnational or pan-European Level – just as we refuse to prioritise the national over the local’ (in Varoufakis et al. 2016). This perspective challenges the prioritization of the national level to forge a political project, as evident in the Europeanization project of Syriza and in Plan B. However, the decision of Varoufakis to present a candidacy to the EP elections in 2019 entailed a shift to a kind of political organizational form and the challenge of how to present a transnational project when the electoral districts are still national. The transnational party European Spring was to compete with other national parties across Europe and in public spheres which are mainly nationalized and where the political agenda is predominantly defined by domestic issues, rather than by European issues. The translation of DiEM25 as a transnational movement into an electoral force was determined by a series of decisions. The first one was to maintain DiEM25 as a movement, in that DiEM25’s European New Deal was the framework for the parties supporting the project but without DiEM25 becoming a political actor. The second decision was to choose Varoufakis as head of the electoral list in Germany. The symbolism of the former Greek minister leading the list in Germany was quite strong and challenged the interpretations of the uneven development of Europe in terms of conflicts between nations. The third decision was the formation of the electoral coalition European Spring composed by national parties adhering to DiEM25’s principles: Génération-s (France), Razem (Poland), Alternativet (Denmark), DemA (Italy), MeRA25 (Greece), Demokratie in Europa (Germany), Der Wandel (Austria), Actua (Spain) and Livre (Portugal). It is quite obvious that the parties joining European Spring are minor parties with a weak impact and support in their respective countries, many of them without representation in the national parliaments. Their inclusion within a transnational project did not change their fortune and they remained electorally insignificant. Here it is pertinent to make a reflection about the difficulties of transnationalism when not rooted in

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local and national realities. Already in its beginning, DiEM25 experienced serious problems with the articulation of local social struggles, since some movements claimed their autonomy and saw no point in becoming part of a larger movement which imposed its own values. It was also a challenge to find national parties that wanted to be part of the transnational coalition and subscribe to DiEM25’s program. None of the major left parties showed interest in being on such a list. The impossibility of having a transnational European list, instead of the aggregation of national lists, together with the limited relevance of the supporting parties accounted for the lack of electoral success of European Spring. The lack of results should not be confused with the irrelevance of the initiative. The attempt to develop transnational populism, also electorally, enables the introduction of other elements which are not easy to find when populism is mainly a national phenomenon. There are republican elements in the claim for a constitution and cosmopolitanism in the defense of free movement, against borders and the nationalism on both the left and the right. Like Europeanization and Plan B, DiEM25 intervenes in the geographical divide between North and South but, instead of doing so being anchored in a national reality, it does so from a transnational perspective: The only thing we can do as progressives is to run across Europe saying that there is no conflict between Greeks and Germans, there is no conflict between North and South. There are however innocent victims in both North and South. That is why we have opted for a transnational movement. (Varoufakis 2018)

Common interests and identities are constructed across geographical divisions and take into account the consequences of neoliberal politics. Varoufakis opposed the idea of going back to the nation-state, as Mélenchon proposed, because, according to him, it would reinforce the agenda of the far-right. As seen in this case, left populism from international sovereigntism and from transnationalism present different ways of articulating ‘the people’ and of dealing with sovereignty. DiEM25 continued developing their transnational approach. In December 2018, DiEM25 and the Sanders Institute called for all

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progressive forces to form a common front in the fight against the twin forces of fascism and free market fundamentalism. In May 2020, the global initiative Progressive International (PI) was formally founded and launched. Compared to DiEM25, it is clear that the transnational scope moves from being European to global, but PI claims to present three novelties: (1) it brings together a diversity of progressive forces which proves that political parties no longer hold the monopoly of political organization; (2) a social network is not enough and a programmatic and transformative policy vision should be developed; and (3) a lasting infrastructure should be built instead of a reliance on temporary campaigns (Adler 2020). The similarities with DiEM25 are quite evident in PI’s roadmap. In terms of content, Varoufakis refers to ‘Twin Authoritarianism’ composed by the Liberal Establishment and the National International. Indeed, according to the leader of DiEM25, the great political clash is ‘not between the Establishment and assorted Progressives but between different parts of the Establishment: One part appearing as the stalwarts of Liberal Democracy, the other as the representatives of Illiberal Democracy’ (Varoufakis 2020). A PI is necessary to counteract the two variants of authoritarianism which reinforce each other. After his resignation as Finance Minister, Varoufakis started an initiative that was to face the transnational elites on their own ground, namely transnationally. While DiEM25 is a movement in a wide sense, the electoral coalition European Spring shows the limitations of the electoral strategy for a transnational movement. However, the foundation of PI reflects the belief in the need for addressing the enemies of democracy transnationally (the liberal establishment and the national international). Although in this case, despite keeping antagonism as the main future, the key subject does not seem to be the people but humanity, embracing the cosmopolitanism already present in DiEM25.

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199

Conclusion

In the introduction, I referred to Eurocommunism to indicate a previous attempt to develop a transnational alternative, implicit in the idea of a communism with European characteristics. It was a moment of transition for the left in which communism was defined as part of the democratic party system, rejecting the communism of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and searching for a political position in relation to social democratic parties, on the other. Recently, the left has experienced a new process of redefinition in which the question of Europe and which kind of Europe can be imagined became essential after the economic crisis of 2008. The emergence of left populist parties implied likewise a new positioning toward social democratic parties but also toward farright populist parties, as well as radical left parties. The strength of left parties, particularly in Greece, Spain and France, made other parties, in principle not populist, approach populism and form coalitions led by left populist parties. I have identified three modes of shaping a European alternative by left populism (see Fig. 7.1): Europeanization, international sovereigntism and transnationalism. The first one was characterized by the leading role played by Syriza both in the EP elections and in the Greek elections, becoming the first left government in Europe. In this period, the main actors were national political parties and, at the European level, the PEL. The failure of Syriza to change austerity politics provoked the emergence of other initiatives, not limited to parliamentary forces and institutional arenas. Plan B opened up to the participation to civil society and DiEM25 actually did not count on political parties. The post-Syriza initiatives, despite initial similarities, have been developed as separate ones with no option of convergence and have proven to have limited electoral impact in the EP elections. Their articulations of the antagonist relation between the people and the elite differed and the focus on the return to nation-state (sovereigntism) and on transnationalism accentuated the differences. Although left populism seems to have lost its momentum in Europe, the attempts to imagine another Europe and how to get there show important lessons about the internationalization of populism and of the

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Europeanization (2013-2015)

International sovereigntism (2015-) Transnationalism (2015-)

Actors Syriza, Southern left populist and radical left parties Plan B Now the People! DiEM25 European Spring Progressive International

Arenas European Elections (presidency of the commission) ‘Domino effect’ after Syriza taking power European Electoral alliance European platform

Imagined Europe Southern European union. Social Europe

Europe based in cooperation and solidarity electoral Democratic European Union

Fig. 7.1 Modes of forging European alternatives by left populism

left, in general. The tensions between claiming to represent the social majority and having the electoral majority existing at the national level have proven to be far more complicated at the European level. In the meantime, the challenge of turning the EU into a Europe of the people remains still open.

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8 Winds of Change, or Fighting the Windmills: Exploring the Economic Visions of the Pan-European Movement DiEM25 ˇ Kristián Srám

8.1

Introduction

The past decade has brought unprecedented challenges to the European integration project. Two major economic crises (the Global Financial Crisis, the European Debt Crisis) and the so-called migration crisis have tested the status quo of the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of European integration. The discussions about a subsequent political backlash, the present moment as well as the future of European integration are dominated by topics such as the emergence and impact of rightwing populism, illiberalism, threats to democratic regimes, authoritarian, disintegrative tendencies, etc. These discussions certainly have the utmost importance in and out of academia. Still, the national scope of these K. Šrám (B) Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_8

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debates mostly overlooked newly emerging left-wing transnational movements such as DiEM25, Volt, EurAlter and their contribution to the public debates regarding the future of Europe amidst the recent turmoil. Despite their relatively small electoral significance, they represent an important phenomenon of transnational political projects that propose often imaginative and progressive visions. At the same time, these movements challenge the neoliberal status quo of European integration and could be seen as a politicization of progressive, or left-wing critique of dominant neoliberal trajectories. Furthermore, they enjoy significant support from scholarly critics of neoliberalism, thus representing relevant discourses reflecting the broad impacts of neoliberal governance. This chapter specifically follows the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) that emerged in 2016 as a progressive, left, cosmopolitanian, pan-European reaction to post-crisis austerity politics adopted by EU. The movement reacts to the causes and effects of the post-crisis turn to austerity. These are framed as critique of bureaucratic and technocratic governance, policymaking betraying the laws or treaties of European integration, power accumulated by large corporations, and an “antiEuropean backlash” consisting of “nationalism, extremism and racism” (DiEM25 Manifesto). Due to its discourse, rhetoric, and construction of a binary opposition between transnational people and transnational elites, the movement also earned the label of populism (De Cleen et al. 2020; Bonfert 2020; Blokker 2019; Moffitt 2017), but due to its inclusionary dimension (De Cleen et al. 2020: 4), DiEM may fall within the tradition of emancipatory, left-wing variants of populism as envisioned for example by Chantal Mouffe (2018). Recently, the movement enjoys growing academic attention (e.g., De Cleen et al. 2020; Bonfert 2020; Blokker 2019; Moffitt 2017 and others) that inter alia discuss DiEM’s grass-root, transnational, populist dimensions as well as their counter-hegemonic positions in terms of identifying as an anti-austerity, or, less explicitly, as an antineoliberal movement. As the movement’s core position and conceptual understanding of DiEM25 with regard to its populist, democratic, grassroot dimensions were recently developed, I will specifically focus on an exploration of the movement’s economic visions. By doing so, I aim to shed more light on various links between the neoliberal status

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quo and DiEM’s economic visions and critique. In this regard, I will explore particular modalities and proposals that are thus far conceptualized as counter-hegemonic due to their anti-neoliberal standpoint. I see the movement’s economic visions and critique as constantly evolving, dynamic, and negotiated. Since the movement’s proclaimed grass-root organization and their aim to overarch various bottom-up campaigns, or activities that are aligned with their goals, next to official positions perpetuated in their manifestos, official speeches, policy documents, campaigns, we should also pay attention to the participants’ economic visions and critique and their appropriation of the movement’s official positions. This is particularly important as the participants are seen as an inherent part of democratic deliberation, constitutional ambitions, and the community/local-level impact of the movement. Gaining a complex understanding of the economic visions of the movement is contingent upon going beyond official positions formulated in the core documents and official discourses. This approach should yield a fuller understanding of the inner dynamics and possible trajectories of DiEM’s position, as well as the possible conflicts and functions within the critique that the movement mobilizes. This might be particularly important as DiEM25 puts a strong emphasis on its multiple levels, on the transnational, national, and local. Between these levels, various tensions and difficulties arise as highly different critiques of neoliberalism are formulated (elites and intellectuals; locals; workers; urban and rural; radical; moderate, or (neo-)Marxist left-wingers). Taking note of this complexity, DiEM’s counter-hegemonic position is seen as a complex nexus of official positions, enveloping campaigns, and participants’ voices, their understanding of DiEM’s societal role, various forms of local-level engagement with communities, and activism. This complex nexus is deconstructed using a qualitative analysis of various sources of DiEM’s economic visions. The data includes the European New Deal and Green New Deal for Europe campaigns, articles, and opinions published on the diem25.org platform, selected video materials published on the DiEM25 youtube channel, participants interviews (n = 23), and field notes collected during the DiEM25 Assembly held on November 23–24 in Prague in 2019.

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The analysis contributes to the book’s aspiration to gain a complex understanding of various imaginations of the European future and competing narratives of European integration by exploring the economic visions, agenda, and argument articulated by DiEM25 movement. As per the imaginations of the European future, DiEM represents a case of critique of neoliberalism, a call for sustainability, an insistence on the urgency in the environmental transition, inclusion, and working and middle-class struggles. Thus, the chapter further broadens our understanding of the post-crisis development of neoliberalism by means of an exploration of DiEM25, seen as a political platform for a wide range of various critiques. The chapter starts off by summarizing ongoing debates on the classification of DiEM25 and the trajectory of the post-crisis development of neoliberalism. On this basis, the chapter elaborates its theoretical contribution. These parts are followed by an introduction of methods and methodology used, after which the main results are presented. The analytical section is structured into two parts: first, covering the official positions, and second, covering the participants’ emic perspectives. Finally, the chapter is wrapped up by means of a summary and a discussion of the main results.

8.2

Literature Review and Theoretical Contribution

The contribution of the chapter is three-fold. It contributes to a widening stream of literature on DiEM25 as a transnational populist movement (see Bonfert 2020; De Cleen et al. 2020; Kuyper and Moffitt 2020; Agustín 2017). Secondly, it contributes to the literature dedicated to the post-crisis development of neoliberalism (see Brenner et al. 2017; Worth 2016; Crouch 2015). Thirdly, it serves as an empirical exploration of DiEM’s ideas in the broader context of contemporary European challenges in terms of (dis-)integration, economic hardships, dynamics of social problems, etc.

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Recently, left-wing transnational movements are receiving a new spark of interest despite the most attention being cast on electorally more relevant right-wing modalities. When looking at the case of DiEM25, the literature reveals difficulties with labeling DiEM25 with loose adjectives such as left-wing or transnational. For example, De Cleen et al. (2020: 13–14) mark that the populist dimension of any transnational populist movement should explicitly speak on behalf of a transnationally defined people, but DiEM25 may intend to connect various, often-time nationally defined, peoples of Europe (see also the chapter of Chiantera-Stutte). Nevertheless, a consensus on the transnational populist nature of DiEM seems to hold (also see chapter of Panos Panayotu). The populist dimension is primarily seen in the vigorous and vivid contours of DiEM’s rhetoric and their core distinction between the elite and the people (De Cleen et al. 2020: 3), which would render DiEM25 populist according to the standards of Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser resonant definition which emphasizes the moral, antagonistic split between “the elite” and “the people,” and calls for increased sovereignty of the latter (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017: 5–6). In DiEM’s account, the neoliberal structures are seen as entangled in non-transparent ways. The “elites,” consisting of “corporations in cahoots,” lobbyists, banks (etc.), are seen as deceiving European peoples. The former are seen as the main actors and orchestrators of the contemporary crises. When it comes to their relation to “the people,” there is clear-cut rhetoric of malign intentions, e.g.,“[neoliberal elites] march[ing] [their economies] off the cliff of competitive austerity” (Manifesto, online). When it comes to the critique of neoliberalism, the language is homogenizing and generalizing. The vigorous rhetoric is present even in the key document’s factual passages, which suggest the intention to render populism as one of the constitutive dimensions. While the literature suggests the important distinction between exclusionary and inclusionary populism (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013), where DiEM falls under the inclusionary forms (De Cleen et al. 2017: 17), it could be noted that the populist rhetoric itself has adverse effects connected to the perpetuation of the simplified depiction of inherently more complex social and political realities. Perhaps more interesting is the left-wing classification in the context of Bonfert’s observation that DiEM “renounces any plans to nationalize banks, impose capital

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controls, or raise taxes on finance and wealth” (2020: 8). In the economic sphere, DiEM seems to pose progressive rather than traditionally leftist solutions. Instruments such as taxation or capital control are seen as a further burden on “exhausted working and middle classes” (European New Deal, n.d.: 14). Bonfert (2020: 8) argues that this might be a reflection of DiEM’s intention to attract a broader spectrum of possible allies. As DiEM25 was launched as a reaction to the crisis of the neoliberal status quo, exposed by the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the 2013 European Debt Crisis, its explicitly anti-austerity and anti-neoliberal message serve as a steadfast core basis of their philosophy. Their most prominent figures and intellectual supporters are recruited from the ranks of some of the most prominent critics of neoliberalism. An exploration and deeper understanding of visibility and resonance of said critique may also contribute to the literature dedicated to the post-crisis development of neoliberalism. Soon after the crises, neoliberal policymaking re-established its dominant presence in the form of widely prescribed austerity instruments. The dominant position of marketbased and austerity solutions may also indicate that neoliberalism was even reinforced. In this regard, Brenner et al. (2017: 22) argues that neoliberalism and “market-oriented rules of the game” were constitutionalized through “a web of treaties, accords, and sanctions.” While this might be due to the embedded nature of neoliberalism (Joseph 2013; Bohle and Greskovits 2007), some authors go even further to argue that neoliberalism was not only reinstituted but reinforced, transforming its embedded nature to an “uncompromising” one, meaning deepening neoliberal policy, marginalizing social cohesion policies, shifting the balance of power favoring supranational elites (Souliotis and Alexandri 2017: 10–11). Given their explicit goals, this is among the constitutive dimensions of DiEM25. Despite the fact that the economic and financial crisis opened up the discursive space for the articulation of various types of critique (e.g., see Worth 2016), and despite DiEM25’s explicit opposition to neoliberal crisis management, the electoral success of left-wing movement/parties, including DiEM25 was rather marginal (see Hernández and Kriesi 2016). Nevertheless, the continuous efforts of DiEM25 may yet yield results.

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When theorizing what neoliberalism is, I choose to follow an emic perspective and explore how neoliberalism is constructed in official documents and participants’ accounts. In this regard, DiEM’s critique goes much beyond a mere discussion of economic policy, as it also includes a societal and cultural critique. To capture these notions, I understand neoliberalism not only as an economic doctrine concentrating on the free market, deregulation, minimal state, privatization, financial globalization, corporatism (for discussion on the conceptual development of neoliberalism see Venugopal 2015), but also in terms of the values, culture, or practices that made such social organization possible such as individualism, competition, responsibilization, profit-seeking (for discussion on various anthropological approaches to neoliberalism see Hilgers 2011).

8.3

Methodology

As noted above, the economic visions produced by DiEM25 are explored through a qualitative analysis of DiEM’s projects of the European New Deal and the Green New Deal for Europe, articles and opinions published on diem25.org platform, opinions published on the DiEM25 youtube channel, participants interviews (n = 23, semi-structured), and field notes collected during DiEM25 Assembly held on November 23– 24, 2019 in Prague. Policy documents related to the European New Deal and the Green New Deal for Europe combined with participant interviews served as primary sources of data. Additional documents were collected later until theoretical saturation was reached. Data were transformed into texts that were then analyzed using NVivo software. Analysis operated on the basis of a hermeneutical iteration between existing literature, data, and writing. The official texts were coded using open coding principles while the initial codes were gradually aggregated in the process of analysis. These were then used to code the interviews in order to capture the participants’ ideation. The combination of various types of sources takes into account links and differences between visions produced by the movement’s elites and

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participants’ goals, motivations, and ideations. This is particularly important as participants’ accounts are still under-researched. Additionally, in the context of movements’ proclaimed grass-root democratic principles, DiEM should be studied holistically in order to capture the dynamic dimensions of decentralized agenda in the local communities. Activities on the local community level are encouraged by the movement, and we may presume these actions will be shaped not only by the official position formulated in core documents but also by members’ particular appropriation and understanding of the movement’s economic theses. This approach may empirically enrich the prior analyses that predominantly focused on the level of the movement’s elites and official documents. Needless to say, a qualitative scope does not allow us to capture the proportion of resonance of official positions among members and the extent to which it guides their activities within local communities or activism. It can, however, map out the resonating ideas, reveal the dynamics of appropriation, or divulge affiliations between individual perspectives on a localized level and agenda set from top-down channels.1

8.4

Results

“Unless Europe’s progressives act now, not only will the European Union dissolve but, even worse, it will be replaced by something uglier where permanent economic crisis will converge with irreversible authoritarianism and human despair” (European New Deal Complete Policy Paper 2020: 1). 1 Other important contexts shaping the data (co-)creation include the following. The interviews were collected by different members of the research team over the span of three years. Each researcher may have shaped the data by emphasizing topics of her/his interest. Some of the interviews were collected in various national contexts. These included, mainly, but not exclusively, Germany, Czech Republic, and Italy. The selection was made to cover various perspectives across geographical regions with varying historical experiences (western, eastern/post-socialist, southern), but was also based on practical reasons (residence of research team members). Some of the interviews were collected at the DiEM25 Assembly in Prague in 2019. It could be reasonably assumed that more privileged participants were able to travel there due to time and financial costs. The most important conclusion is that the sample did not include workingclass representatives. However, this is in line with DiEM’s own reflection of the absence of working-class ranks (field notes).

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Among DiEM’s core political positions is the critique of neoliberalism, which is seen as a causal background of contemporary economic crises and the much-discussed rise of right-wing populism. DiEM conditions any political possibility of Europe’s future on the regulation of neoliberal governance, while the European New Deal outlines the key policy positions in further detail. Apart from DiEM’s critique of neoliberalism targeted at principles of competition and austerity, the movement also warns about the dangers of economic nationalism triggered by policies enacted by right-wing populist (RWP) actors—“the industries that died when the borders came down have gone forever. They cannot be recreated by impeding trade now. If we tried to revive them through protectionist policies, the price would be a breakdown of the existing, integrated Europe, with trade wars inflicting vast new losses on our peoples” (European New Deal Complete Policy Paper 2020: 4). Despite the fact that these cases are theorized as repercussions of anti-austerity (neoliberal) political projects, DiEM’s economic visions center around principles of transnationalism, solidarity, and post-capitalism, rendering their economic visions broader than just reactionary critique of neoliberalism. In other words, the economic system needs to be eventually completely transformed. Economic dimensions are among the core constitutive blocks of DiEM25. Their manifesto calls for political goals in the form of democratization, but the struggle is in an essence economic one, as democracy is perceived to be usurped by “[a] confederacy of myopic politicians, economically naïve officials, and financially incompetent ‘experts’ [who] submit slavishly to the edicts of financial and industrial conglomerates, alienating Europeans and stirring up a dangerous anti-European backlash” (Manifesto 2021). In their ideation, the lack of democracy is an outcome of incompetent political leadership and business-oriented goals of the private sector that exert control over the decision-making processes. From this position, they call for democratization that is seen as the only viable option that prevents the disintegration as the motto “[t]he EU will be democratised,[o]r it will disintegrate” states. Apart from localized projects and the activities of activists’ networks, DiEM’s agenda is organized around five campaigns—Tech Sovereignty, European New Deal (END), Transparency, Refugees, and The Green New Deal

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for Europe (GNDE). Even those that do not straightforwardly outline economic policy do connect their respective domains with the critique of neoliberal, technocratic status quo (e.g., taxation, copyright issues, the democratization of information access, increased transparency of EU preventing a business and politics nexus). Thus far, the only exception is the Refugees campaign that has not been developed into a broader policy paper. Needless to say that both END and GNDE policy papers are significantly more extensive, spanning over one hundred pages compared to the twenty to thirty pages long counterparts. DiEM’s official founding economic visions are formulated under the European New Deal campaign, later, in 2019, DiEM25 founded The Green New Deal for Europe that “aims to unite Europe’s communities, unions, parties, and activists behind a shared visions of environmental justice” (Green New Deal for Europe, online). GNDE is congruent with the original END, while its development was outlined by the END’s goals (European New Deal: 10). GNDE expands the original goals of investing in “a real, green, sustainable, innovative economy” (Ibid.) by summarizing 85 concrete policies that drive green transition (Green New Deal for Europe: 4–8). In any case, the foundational goal, as well as political philosophy that serves as an argumentation basis, are formulated in the European New Deal. The document starts off with the assumption that the leadership and innate principles of the European Union deepened the economic downturn beyond repair unless immediate action is taken. This immediate action is philosophically linked to the Rooseveltian New Deal era, which emphasizes the call for a paradigm change. In the introductory paragraphs, the actor of change is defined as “European progressives” who need to take action to prevent the disintegration of the European Union and its replacement by “irreversible authoritarianism and human despair” (European New Deal: 4). The danger does not only come from technocratic neoliberal solutions and private businesses’ interference with politics, but also from closing up into the misled economic nationalism in forms of protectionism, national chauvinisms, and resulting cultural impoverishment (p. 5). The electoral and policy trends centered around right-wing populism, illiberalism, authoritarianism are portrayed as direct consequences of austerity politics. The economic sphere is hence

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conceived as a societal and political force, not only a neutral arena separate from societal and cultural processes. Implicitly, the political philosophy upon which the economic policy is argued does not understand neoliberalism only as an economic policy but as a cultural and societal force. Furthermore, the economic policy building starts from the assumption that broader societal impacts need to be carefully considered as other solutions are inherently technocratic. The core ideas are summarized as guiding principles that include turning idle “wealth into green investment, basic goods provision, sharing returns to capital and wealth,” and removing the macroeconomic management from unelected technocrats (p. 10). These guiding principles are later elaborated into six aims: “taming finance and re-politicising money creation, funding green investment-led recovery, funding basic goods for Europe’s ‘maintainers’, sharing the returns of capital and wealth and democratizing the economic sphere, pan-European coordination of monetary, fiscal and social policies, defeat[ing] the euro crisis” (p. 11). These steps, aimed at stabilization, should be in the short term realized within existing institutional boundaries (p. 25) but are time-sensitive as otherwise it is expected that austerity measures will continue to develop (p. 7). Only later—“once DiEM25’s European New Deal becomes part of Europe’s political discourse” (p. 9)—the movent aims to replace “all existing European Treaties with a democratic European Constitution” (Ibid.). Thus the movement oscillates between reformism in the short run and radicalism in the long run. The outlined goals are to be achieved through the democratization of the financial sector and the redefinition of the principle of competition to solidarity. The progressive dimension is represented in DiEM’s opposition to “pseudo-Keynesian stimulus tax-and-spend programs” (p. 26) as increased taxation is deemed detrimental to the working and middle classes. Solidarity aimed to rebalance economic inequalities is both national and international. The former relies precisely on the empowerment of the working and middle classes, with particular attention to vulnerable groups—youth entering the job market and the older population leaving the job market (p. 4). The latter aims at the geopolitical arrangement between Europe’s core and the periphery that is predicated on “revi[ing] the sovereignty of its people” (p. 27). The practical

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solution is seen in various ways of mobilizing the idle cash and aggregate savings under a transparent and democratized financial sector that should substitute the tax-based funding, which should be boosted by progressing technological change and automation (p. 10). Solidarity should be materialized in “living wage, decent social housing, highquality health and […] education and dividends from digitization and automation” (p. 10). Thus, mobilization of unnecessarily highly liquid idle cash is combined with “democratization” of profits, which effectively means breaking the neoliberal mechanism of socialization of costs and privatization of profits (“re-politicization of money creation”). Mobilization of idle cash is supposed to be facilitated by issuing public bonds (p. 15) and introducing a framework for novel bank regulation and macroeconomic rebalancing (pp. 11–12) to democratize the banking environment. These steps serve as practical follow-up on the critique of the growth of the financial sector (financialization), which was speeded up by financing bailouts of private sector actors via cuts in fiscal spending (Green New Deal: 30). In this regard, DiEM calls for what could be deemed re-financialization, which should consist of legislative and regulatory oversight of global finances in combination with the above regulatory steps and ways of mobilizing idle cash (European New Deal: 13–15). The proposed changes should be done without appropriating any configurations resembling “multiple speed” of “variable geometric” Europe that are seen as disintegratory forces institutionalizing transnational or trans-local inequalities and economic nationalism (European New Deal: 5). Overall, DiEM’s progressive dimension is best characterized by its departure from both increased taxation combined with governmental support and minimizing the role of the state while leaving the market rule freely and its stringent call for a massive transformation of society starting with the economy. The ultimate aims seek to profoundly redefine the neoliberal connections between labor and capital by promoting a fairer share of profits, with states prioritizing investment-led growth over austerity. The progressive aspects of DiEM’s policy proposals are expected to clash with the establishment (p. 10) and both left and right political actors (p. 27). The clash with the establishment is represented by the critique of mainstream economic (neoliberal) policies on the economic

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level and the non-transparent nexus between business and politics (Manifesto, online). As per the clashes with right-wing forces, DiEM explicitly criticizes economic protectionism as a disintegration force, but share the position that de-industrialization due to the construction of the single-market was misguided (European New Deal: 5). When scrutinizing the DiEM’s position vis-à-vis the European left, their progressive policy agenda is presumed to clash with left political actors who are representing “the remaining real left parties” on topics of nationalization, etc. (p. 27). Nevertheless, DiEM’s economic agenda receives a critique from the broader spectrum of left actors. Notably, this involves topics such as the utilization of taxation-based fiscal instruments, the feasibility of the proposals with regard to the sovereignty of member states, or the lack of a democratic framework due to technocratic approach (Democratizing Europe: By taxation or by debt?). DiEM’s ambition to spearhead various left-wing and progressive trends may not be without problems in clashes with the movement’s economic direction. Yet this clash might not be anchored in ideological conflict as in varying perspectives on feasible and realistic expectations. The Green New Deal for Europe is a campaign launched in 2019 as a follow-up on green transition goals outlined in the European New Deal (European New Deal: 8). The way crises are portrayed differs from the European New Deal. GNDE sees Europe facing three crises: the economic crisis, environmental, and democratic (The Green New Deal for Europe: 9). The causes of the crises are seen as intertwined and connected to a neoliberal status quo. More particularly, the depiction of causes includes the pursuit of endless growth that puts strain on the environment, austerity politics, and alienated political decisionmaking (Ibid.). Overall, the environmental goals are closely linked to the economy both in its practical aspects (policymaking, financing the transition) and political-philosophical that essentially articulate the environmental crisis as a crisis of capitalism. GNDE is thus fully consistent in DiEM’s ideation of societies facing the long-term impact of neoliberal policymaking and values, which are politically manifested in the status quo, adopted by the political project of European integration. On the practical level, the GNDE relies on launching three institutions—the Green Public Works (GPW), the Environmental Union

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(EnU), and the Environmental Justice Commision (EJC) (Ibid.). Each of these oversees a particular area of the transition. The GPW shall “decarbonis[e] Europe’s economy, revers[e] biodiversity loss and guarante[e] decent jobs across the continent” by reducing the energy demand by transforming the housing system, which also serves social goals (e.g., reduction of homelessness and housing security, developing infrastructure), creating financial incentives for the transition of private sectors (founded mainly by green transition bounds, tax instruments), and empowering local communities while reducing the involvement of large businesses (pp. 9–10), transforming industrial practices (p. 51), and elevating the agricultural and rural communities (pp. 52–53). These areas intersect in effectively replacing the market-based competition, capital accumulation by environmental sustainability (p. 9). The Environmental Union serves as a platform for producing the necessary legislation in three key legislative spheres: emergency, sustainability, and solidarity (p. 10). Emergency legislation allows for a rapid politicization of the green transition and the mobilization of expert systems to aid it (pp. 57–58). Sustainability seeks to institutionalize practices that will ensure the long-term feasibility of the green transition and create new between production, markets, and citizens that do not burden the environment (pp. 60–61). Solidarity legislation aims to ensure that transition outcomes are democratically shared and not exclusively privatized (p. 70). These formal institutions should drive and enable the solutions rather than set them authoritatively. The GNDE program should be driven by effective bottom-up channels as well that are inter alia manifested in the Green Solidarity Network that aspires to create various links between local communities, cities, etc., to share best practices, learn, educate, and work together (p. 38), or support the independent local selforganized units (p. 23), which should then be incorporated into political decision-making by promoting “radical municipalism” (pp. 23–24). This also shows that the GNDE success is contingent on communities’ active engagement while the policy implementation is presupposed on largescale socio-cultural changes and propensity to adopt the cultural and societal critique of neoliberalism. In terms of the scale of the proposed changes, the horizon of change is inherently global. The proposals go beyond the sphere of Europe and track the environmental crisis along

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the supply chain between production and consumption (p. 77). In this regard, Europe should become more aware and responsible for the global relations between the global north and the global south while straightening the uneven distribution of the impact of climate change (pp. 10– 11). This is connected to the broader idea of environmental justice, which does not account only for issues vis-a-vis spatial distribution of the environmental impact, but also considers the intergenerational justice (p. 77), or class-based injustice residing in higher environmental impact of life-style consumption generated by richer population (p. 16). DiEM’s GNDE has interesting dynamics in relation to the activities of the EU in the area of green policy. EU launched a European Green Deal (EGD) in 2019 that outlines goals to reduce emissions by (at least 55%) by 2030 and develop into the “world’s first climate-neutral continent” (EU climate action and the European Green Deal, online). While the initiative includes social goals that are in rhetoric close to DiEM in areas of inclusivity (“no person and no place is left behind”), or reducing consumerism in their call for “circular economy” (A European Green Deal, online), there are important clashes on key principles that drive these projects. The European Green Deal was criticized for “preserving the technocratic power,” “exporting [the] carbon emissions to the outside [of Europe],” or “privatizing the gains in green transition” (DiEM TV: The Green New Deal for Europe with James K. Galbraith and David Adler, online). The European Green Deal is thus portrayed as a continuation of the criticized status quo that is stripped of the social dimension in the areas of justice between classes, generations, or between global regions. The contemporary trajectory of European integration is seen to only appropriate the partial and insufficient aspects of the green transition to maintain their “business as usual” attitude that prioritizes the interest of large businesses (The Green New Deal for Europe: 29), displacing the workforce that might be made redundant during the transition toward a green, decarbonized economy (DiEM TV: The Green New Deal for Europe with James K. Galbraith and David Adler, online). All in all, the EGD is rendered “woefully inadequate […] [and] centered on growth and profit rather than people and planet” (European Green New Deal: 16). DiEM also criticizes the allocation of investment using the example of the EU cohesion funds that did not sufficiently raise the

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standard of living in the beneficiary countries, making a parallel to EU plans for green investment (Green New Deal: 29). On top of EGD’s perceived inadequacy, the politicization or appropriation of green topics from the neoliberal positions could make DiEM’s initiative more difficult to be fully carried through. Furthermore, the discussions about green transition are shifted toward discussions concerning the neoliberal status quo. Despite seeming parallels in rhetoric, the mutual position of these initiatives remains in stark contrast. The official positions of the movement are consistent in their critique of neoliberalism and neoliberal aspects of European integration. The movement rhetorically relies on a sense of urgency in its portrayal of European crises that are multiple and intertwined (democratic, economic, environmental). The common denominator of the articulation of these crises is their common etiology connected to the negative consequences of neoliberalism. The critique of neoliberalism ranges from the political domain (policy, European integration) to the social and societal domain as well (values, connection between spheres of business and politics). Their agenda selection can be seen as left. This is due to their emphasis on putting the working and middle classes in the center of politics. In terms of proposed solutions, the movement can be characterized as progressive in the ideas of mobilizing the savings, use of technology, modernization, or even social organization. As per the social organization, the movement seeks to depart from the trajectory of financial globalization that converges into what Yanis Varoufakis conceives as “technofeudalism” (Capitalism has become Technofeudalism, online). Instead, they renew the idea of community which should serve as a catalyzer of bottom-up political channels and vehicle of sustainability in an environmental and socio-economic sense. Overall, the value structure of the main propositions resides in humanism (belief in human potential, possibilities of bottom-up channels), pragmatism (intention to build upon the existing infrastructure of EU), idealism (the radical changes to which the visions converge to in the long run), populism (on the level of rhetoric), communitarianism, and glocalization (Table 8.1).

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Table 8.1 Value structure of economic policy—official documents Pragmatism Idealism Populism Humanism

Communitarianism Glocalization

8.5

Intention to build upon the existing infrastructure of EU; reformism in the short term; incremental steps Radical changes in the long term; radical critique of (neoliberal) status quo Use of populist rhetoric; emphasis on sense of crisis Belief in human potential; creative possibilities of participation and bottom-up political channels; solidarity Community principle drives the economic solutions and social transformation Transnationalism is crucial to solve global problems, but needs to be balanced by the emphasis on the local (otherwise some regions will be driven into periphery); subsidiarity and local participation

Participants Accounts

Due to the fact that the movement seeks to become a platform for politically aligned solutions and heavily relies on participation and grass-root democracy, the exploration of its economic visions needs to account for the participants’ understanding of the official principles as well as their own creative input. Thus, this analysis assumes that the economic agenda is not set or fixed but negotiated, which is presumably even more pertinent due to the movement’s structure. The participants’ notions are inherently broader and fuzzier than the official positions. Using the participants’ prism, participants understand the movement’s economic visions and policies in a multitude of ways. As a result, the movement also mobilizes a variety of different supporters based on their understanding of neoliberalism. However, their thorough exploration should reveal the inner dynamics, possible trajectories, and conflicts in the proposed economic visions. The core element of the participants’ economic visions was the critique of various aspects of neoliberalism. The participants’ critique largely varied based on specificity and its object. As per specificity, some notions were based on a criticism of particular economic policies, policymaking based on neoliberal principles, and socio-economic inequalities produced by the economic status quo, whereas some accounts used overall more inflammatory and generalizing language in framing the critique. These

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were often not substantiated by arguments or evidence and criticized neoliberalism mainly as a culture or ideology. This split between two largely different positions showcases two distinct positions where the critique of neoliberalism is situated. The first position includes the factual critique and political debate that DiEM formulates in their policy documents. This could be understood as a socio-economic critique of neoliberalism. Second, the cultural critique argues the case against neoliberal policy based on values, culture, etc. In the latter case, some participants strongly identified with the populist rhetoric of DiEM25 official positions. The socio-economic critique was significantly more substantiated by evidence. Participants implicitly or explicitly understood it as objective and factual. Thus, the legitimacy of these positions was negotiated on the basis of social-scientific evidence, non-mainstream economy, Yanis Varoufakis’ work, DiEM’s concrete policies, and so on. The socio-economic critique was also mindful of the complexity of the economy and did not employ generalizations to put the main ideas forward. The main motives included the criticism of endless growth, the deepening social inequalities, the economic position of working and middle classes, human dignity and living standards, transnational inequalities and neocolonial links serving as vehicles of the accumulation of capital and privatization of profits, and the democratic deficit created by links between large businesses and politics. These aspects were seen as developments connected to financial globalization that were both revealed and bolstered by the recent economic crises (the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the 2013 European Debt Crisis) and related so-called migration crisis. Despite the sense of crisis and urgency inferred from the assumption that the status quo will eventually crash, the socio-economic critique often aims to find the right balance. Despite the inherent reformism of an urgent call for transformative change, the socio-economic critique still builds on the existing institutional framework. This is, for example, visible in one participant’s distinction between “two capitalisms […]. First [the one that] was created as a manifestation of entrepreneurialism and freedom […], [which] satisfy the real human needs. Then, [the second] parasitic capital that serves only to maintain itself ” (int. 20, edited, translated). These “productive” aspects of capital are seen as a basis upon which

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the institutions that balance the inequalities should be built. The aspect of finding the right balance was also elaborated by another participant who commented that “the economy should transform. But the question is to what extent. Of course, DiEM operates with terms such as preventing exploitations, but a [radical] transformation of capitalism, it is not there. […] Something else than the competition and accumulation of capital needs to be put into the center. At this point, it is environmental sustainability and human dignity. On this basis, the economy needs to be transformed” (int. 8, translated). Here, the distinction between economy and capitalism is painted. The proposed change is gradual and incremental while being realized within the existing institutional boundaries. Even though others called for achieving “a post-capitalistic state of being and existing beyond what […] is unsustainable in terms of resources, […] ecology” (int. 17), they still propose an incremental change in the short run. Overall this strange conflict between short-term reformist and long-term aspirations for radical change is consistent with the official positions of the movement. As per the solutions, the socio-economic critique observed in the interviews was often linked to the existing campaigns. In this regard, participants perpetuated the official positions. Namely, that included the motives of increased economic freedom leading to an improved political (or community) participation which is supposed to be provided by basic dividends or a reduced workweek. The status quo is perceived as limiting democracy due to its passive engagement of citizens, hindered by a non-transparent configuration between a corrupted bureaucracy, “corporations in cahoots,” and business lobbyists. Hence the rhetoric of crises articulates not only economic but also political and social dimensions. Further democratization is enacted by meaningful participation. Increased participation is achieved by freeing up European peoples’ creative potential who cannot be fully politically active under the contemporary labor market legislation. This felt particularly more important for participants from post-socialist countries who also displayed skepticism about the possibilities of unlocking the creative potential of “the peoples” that are bounded by a limited structure of opportunities based on their position in socio-economic structures (fieldnotes). Particular examples that were thematized included low wages and high working

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hours that create barriers to political participation or achieving actual democracy. One participant argued that “they [working class] do not have options to participate if they work eight hours in some warehouse and every four years they vote for some impostor; […] unless people gain a sense of invested interest and options to participate, nothing changes” (int. 8). Generally speaking, the participants from “western” regions were in turn highlighting how their branches “engag[e] with theories and topics of worker unions, […] global workers unions on the European level” (int. 18) suggesting more active engagement and overall less pessimism vis-à-vis feasibility. Doubt about or criticism of DiEM’s official position was mostly framed in terms of feasibility and practical impact. These doubts were further problematized by introducing the distinction between local and transnational levels. This was apparent when bank regulations were discussed. In this regard, one participant criticized the “cozy relationship” between local banks and governmental authority—“I do not see [the effective regulation] as realistic in [country redacted] because there is never going to be the political will […]. Which is what led to our famous bank guarantee in 2008 [referring to state bailouts and “too big to fail” arguments]. [The regulation] would have to come from the EU” (int. 10). This also reveals an interesting paradox that despite the call for a grass-root democratic movement, participants see some of the policies feasible only with the aid of a top-down transnational authority in disentangling this and many other “cozy” relations between business and politics. Next to the socio-economic critique of neoliberalism, the second important position was a cultural or identity-based critique. This position rendered the causes of a neoliberal status quo as a system based on values of competition, profit-seeking, materialistic way of life, individualism, profiteering on inequalities, the immoral exploitation of resources, and an unfair/undemocratic distribution of consequent profits. There were two important modalities within this category. First, the cultural critique of neoliberalism understood neoliberalism as a political manifestation of a certain set of values organized around competition, individualism, profit-seeking, status-seeking, etc. The second modality consisted of perpetuating surface-level populist rhetoric that was not preoccupied

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with policy-based solutions or debates. For example, when asked about how the structures between political decision-making and perceived “elites” should be disentangled and democratized, one participant argued the following: [We should] get rid of them. I wish we do that with real democracy and with transparency. [This] complicated apparatus that they created, it should be destroyed. It should be destroyed and we should start sitting at the table in the European Union to really be, to start playing by the rules of democracy which is being transparent and being fair to people, so we cannot be happy in the world if our happiness is depending on making miserable thousand workers in other parts of the world we consider third world. (int. 10)

This projected the strong sense of injustice and unfairness upon which the economic status quo is seen to have been built. The populist flair of DiEM’s rhetoric becomes a basis for identification while the participation might not be motivated by the merit of political-economic discussions. In these cases, the societal and economic relations are painted in plain and overall more inflammatory ways (e.g., “dark powers” int. 21 substituting the political and business elites). Strangely, these positions may even be critical toward the cosmopolitan dimension of the movement suggesting inner splits within the movement: “[The] movement should be opened to regular people so that it [DiEM] is not just a project […], the most active chapters are in large cities, [consisting of ] mostly just educated Europeans who appreciate the freedom of movement…” (int. 8). Hence, populist rhetoric may not be seen as a means of communicating the policies but as an ultimate goal that may motivate more radical actions. The core idea when it comes to balancing the neoliberal values of competitive individualism was solidarity and an emphasis on well-being. The notion of solidarity was the most significant counterweight to neoliberal values. But it was often seen as an empty signifier that connects to universal humanism, equality, fairness, justice. In practice, the idea of solidarity was supposed to be realized by a more substantial engagement and participation in local communities. One participant argued

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that “the economy should be transformed so that it creates the space for humanist possibilities consisting in helping the elderly […] building the local identity and community” (int. 8). The idea of participation is used in political terms and in terms of engagement with the aspects of local. Implicitly, this criticizes the distribution through markets and a society organized as individuals competing on the market. This should be enriched by an increased emphasis on communities developed and nurtured through voluntary work (made possible by the introduction of a basic dividend). The emphasis on well-being denotes an urge to rethink priorities. The value structure should move away from the omnipresent competition or wealth accumulation—“I mean, we are just here for a bit of time. Why are they so stupid? Focusing on accumulating so much wealth they would not be able to enjoy anyway” (int. 21). The members often thematize the erosion of values under the market-imposed selfishness and competition. These should be replaced again by the principle of solidarity, which is perceived to be part of human nature. On the value system level, the members are in stark contrast to neoliberal positions of competition being embedded in human nature. Even those critical of DiEM’s cosmopolitanism praised universal humanism as the only way to solve the crisis of capitalism. Thus, humanism might be a stronger common denominator than cosmopolitanism.

8.6

Conclusions

DiEM’s economic solutions are intellectually rooted in progressive, grass-root democratic, humanist ideals rather than traditional left backgrounds. However, the topic selection and ideation of societal and political relations center around class struggle, social and economic inequalities, which align them to leftist topics. It can be broadly concluded that the movement is socially left and economically progressive. Compared to the traditional left, their proposed solutions do not heavily insist on increased taxation or nationalization. Economic progressivism can be characterized by the movement’s proposals to mobilize existing wealth, re-channel savings into investments, adopt new technologies, and accommodate the environmental transition. The spheres

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of technology and green transition serve as vehicles of the economic transformation of society toward more just, sustainable forms. The core of the movements’ economic positions resides in providing alternatives to neoliberal economic policymaking and the neoliberal elements of the current form of the European Union. These motives consistently resonate in both the European New Deal and the Green New Deal for European campaigns, currently two of the most developed official proposals. The value structure of economic visions was founded on ideals of universal humanism, equality, meaningful engagement with the community and local levels that should balance out financial globalization. The proposals also contain interesting contrasts between short to medium-run reformism and long-term radical change. In this regard, the call for fundamental transformation contrasts with the incremental change generated by policy plans. A similar tension resides between the pragmatic and humanistic/idealistic features of DiEM’s. The pragmatic feature represents the movement’s intention to build upon existing institutional structures, while the humanistic/idealistic dimensions assume that the contemporary status quo is somehow unnatural and bound to fail. When looking at the critique of neoliberalism and what participants economic visions, we get a much fuzzier and broader spectrum of particular positions. This reveals the dynamic nature of positions that DiEM25 represents and attracts. The participants’ economic visions were captured by looking at their critique of neoliberalism, which consisted of a socioeconomic critique and a cultural critique. In the case of the former, the official positions were expanded or discussed in terms of practical implementation and feasibility. The cultural critique was more aligned with the populist dimension of DiEM’s rhetoric that glosses over the official positions. The cultural critique focuses on the value system of competitive individualism, profit-seeking, etc. A closer identification with populist rhetoric was connected to simplification and generalization. This may suggest that the movement attracts both populist and non-populist supporters who differ in the positions they identify with. Ultimately, such a split may lead to clashes regarding what kind of policies should DiEM produce and what constitutional goals it should pursue.

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Furthermore, certain tension exists between the cosmopolitan dimension and those who strongly identified more strongly with working or middle-class positions. These include a fear of DiEM’s detachment from the working/middle classes and the insufficient mobilization of those whose DiEM claims to represent. Another clash resides in contrast between ordinary members and the movements’ elites. In this regard, some participants argued that the movement over-emphasized top-down channels push elites’ ideas too firmly despite DiEM’s grassroots aspirations. This conclusion is highly consistent with existing literature (see also the chapter of Antje Scharenberg). Some members felt that this aspect diminishes the creative potential DiEM seeks to unlock, while they emphasized that DiEM should be a learning organization and platform for developing ideas. Additionally, the East and the West dichotomy was resonating in the data in that the members from Eastern or post-socialist geographical contexts were more cynical about the possibility of engaging the working class, realistically improving their socio-economic status, and ensuring their participation. On a more general level, the case of DiEM25 represents the politicization of post-crisis critique of the neoliberal status quo and the current status of European integration. The problems they encounter speak of structural and institutional resistance against change and difficulties in integrating various dimensions that are often understood as sources of possible solutions to present crises. Their case also reveals interesting dynamics between the status quo and (radical) changes. This was particularly visible in contrast between DiEM’s and EU versions of green transition or technological progress. Any radical imagination faces the risk of being de-legitimized when the mainstream institutions appropriate a similar agenda. Similarly, any radical or innovative proposal of solving the multifaceted European crises will face resistance. The case of DiEM25 thus further problematizes the lack of creative imagination among the political elites by showcasing the various barriers that protect the status quo.

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References Agustín, Ó. G. (2017). European counterpublics? DiEM25, Plan B and the agonistic European public sphere. Journal of Civil Society, 13(3), 323–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2017.1360233. Blokker, P. (2019). Varieties of populist constitutionalism: The transnational dimension. German Law Journal , 20 (3), 332–350. https://doi.org/10.1017/ glj.2019.19. Bohle, D., & Greskovits, B. (2007). Neoliberalism, embedded neoliberalism and neocorporatism: Towards transnational capitalism in Central-Eastern Europe. West European Politics, 30 (3), 443–466. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01402380701276287. Bonfert, B. (2020). ‘We need to organise millions of people’—How alter Summit and DiEM25 struggle to create a European ‘modern prince.’ Globalizations, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1850615. Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2017). Actually existing neoliberalism. Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings, & David Primrose (Ed.), 1–29. Crouch, C. (2015). Governing social risks in post-crisis Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing. De Cleen, B., Moffitt, B., Panayotu, P., & Stavrakakis, Y. (2020). The Potentials and Difficulties of Transnational Populism: The Case of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). Political Studies, 68(1), 146–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719847576. European New Deal. (n.d.). DiEM25. Retrieved April 14, 2021, from https:// diem25.org/diem25-unveils-its-european-new-deal-an-economic-agendafor-european-recovery/. European New Deal Complete Policy Paper. (n.d). [text]. DiEM25. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://diem25.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/03/Eur opean-New-Deal-Complete-Policy-Paper.pdf. Hernández, E., & Kriesi, H. (2016). The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe. European Journal of Political Research, 55 (2), 203–224. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12122. Hilgers, M. (2011). The three anthropological approaches to neoliberalism. International Social Science Journal, 61(202), 351–364. Joseph, J. (2013). Resilience as embedded neoliberalism: A governmentality approach. Resilience, 1(1), 38–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2013. 765741.

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Kuyper, J., & Moffitt, B. (2020). Transnational populism, democracy, and representation: Pitfalls and potentialities. Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, 12(2), 27–49. https://doi.org/10.21248/gjn.12.02.208. Moffitt, B. (2017). Transnational populism? Representative claims, media and the difficulty of constructing a transnational “people.” Javnost—The Public, 24 (4), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2017.1330086. Mouffe, C. (2018). For a Left populism. Verso Books. Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2013). Exclusionary vs. inclusionary populism: Comparing contemporary Europe and Latin America. Government and Opposition, 48(2), 147–174. https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.201 2.11. Mudde, C., & Kaltwasser, C. R. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Souliotis, N., & Alexandri, G. (2017). From embedded to uncompromising neoliberalism: Competitiveness policies and European Union interscalar relations in the case of Greece. European Urban and Regional Studies, 24 (3), 227–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776416630582. Venugopal, R. (2015). Neoliberalism as concept. Economy and Society, 44 (2), 165–187. Worth, O. (2016). The battle for hegemony: Resistance and neoliberal restructuring in post-crisis Europe. Comparative European Politics, 17.

Online Sources A European Green Deal . (n.d.). [Text]. European Commission—European Commission. Retrieved April 26, 2021, from https://ec.europa.eu/info/str ategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en. Capitalism has become Technofeudalism. (2021, February 24). DiEM25. https://diem25.org/capitalism-has-become-technofeudalism/. Campaigns. (n.d.). DiEM25. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from https://diem25. org/campaigns/. Democratising Europe: By taxation or by debt?—Manon Boujou, Lucas Chancel, Anne-Laure Delatte, Thomas Piketty, Guillaume Sacriste, Stéphanie Hennette and Antoine Vauchez. (2019, February 11). Social Europe. https://www.socialeurope.eu/democratising-europe. DiEM TV: The Green New Deal for Europe with James K. Galbraith and David Adler—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2021, from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=L2RlSgZw66U&ab_channel=DiEM25.

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EU climate action and the European Green Deal . (2019, October 23). [Text]. Climate Action—European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/pol icies/eu-climate-action_en. Manifesto (long). (n.d.). DiEM25. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from https://die m25.org/manifesto-long/. The Green New Deal for Europe. (n.d.). DiEM25. Retrieved April 15, 2021, from https://diem25.org/campaign/green-new-deal/.

Part III Transnational Constituent Power and Constitutionalism

9 European Constitutional Politics and the Making of Collective Self-Images: Technocracy and Populism as a Consequence of Political De-Constitutionalization Pablo Holmes

9.1

Introduction

Roughly one decade ago, constitutional and political theorists were looking at the transnational transformations of world society and the constitutional problems emerging thereof, while attempting to reimagine the political order beyond the state (Walker 2008; Somek 2012; Teubner 2012). Political scientists and legal scholars were increasingly focused on the question of how the world may be governed beyond the state (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson 2006; Kennedy 2009). “Global constitutionalism” became a promising field, at least if one looked at the titles in the constitutional theory catalogues of major publishers. And the European Union, despite the political failure of its constitutional Charta, was seen as the most accomplished experiment towards a political order beyond the national state. P. Holmes (B) Institute for Political Science, University of Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_9

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The world scientific system seems to operate in cycles. Issues may change hastily. And in the era of hyperconnectivity, waves of scholarly interest move even faster, mostly following the issues and problems dominating the news. In its current cycle, constitutional theory seems to be focused again on national politics and (on the new crisis of ) statecentered constitutionalism. The so-called “populist zeitgeist” (Mudde 2004) has drawn scholarly attention back to some of the most basic concepts of modern politics, such as political identity, political representation, the role of religion and culture in politics, the conditions for democratic constitutionalization and, of course, the possibilities and limits of popular sovereignty in the face of the rise of populist constitutionalism (Kriesi 2014; Müller 2016; Alston 2017; Kelly 2017; Blokker 2019a; de la Torre 2019; Urbinati 2019). An observer of the constitutional debate in the years 2000s, who hasn’t followed the scholarship in the field for the last five years, would be surprised by how the “epistemological cosmopolitan shift” could vanish from the theoretical landscape in such a short period of time (Beck 2006: 1–35; Chernilo 2008: 9–33). Within just a couple of years, constitutional theorists and observers of the European integration left aside the ambitious paradigms of global constitutionalism and turned their attention almost completely to the rise of new authoritarian movements and their threats to democratic constitutionalism. The ongoing debate on “populist constitutionalism” addresses problems of transnational politics in the era of populist polarization mostly as one more dimension of the national political populist strategy without making it part of a broader constitutional diagnosis on transnational transformations of society as a whole. Moreover, it dismisses some of the elementary observations made by the scholarship on global and transnational constitutionalism in the last two decades. At most, populist movements are explained as a reaction of culturally backward sectors of the population against globalization and Europeanization (Inglehart and Norris 2016): a revenge of its losers. Indeed, the populism debate focuses so much on the phenomenon itself that it misses some important dimensions that are beyond the conceptual toolkit usually applied to understand the everyday dynamics of national politics. In order to understand populism perhaps one should take a step back and look at the social structures that support modern

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political democracy. We should look at the populist phenomenon less for what it is—how it expresses itself and what it wants—and more from the perspective of the broader context in which it emerges. We should ask what are the conditions that create representative politics and which are the circumstances that may affect these conditions, enabling different sorts of challenges to it. So, we shall understand populist constitutionalism perhaps less as a threat to modern democratic constitutionalism and more as a symptom of an erosion of those very conditions that makes representative democracy possible in the first place. In this chapter, I will discuss some important features of modern politics and its process of differentiation through constitutional structures and how this process plays out in our current political situation, particularly in Europe. In order to pursue this argument, I will initially look at modern constitutional forms with the help of two authors: Claude Lefort and Niklas Luhmann. The former offers us a fundamental view on the importance of the proceduralization of politics to the production of social discourses on representation and societal self-images after what he calls the “democratic revolution”. The latter offers us a sociological reconstruction of the process by which the proceduralization of collective decision-making comes about and which are its structural conditions: the emergence of functional differentiation and the constitutionalization of law and politics (Sects. 9.2 and 9.3). The combination of both authors offers us an interesting toolkit to understand how modern society deals with its own indeterminacy (Sect. 9.4). And it may help us to understand some of the political challenges of the European constitutional crisis (Sects. 9.5 and 9.6). To this extent, this is not exactly a chapter on populist constitutionalism. I am not interested in describing populist’s ideational features, political strategies and programs. Neither I am interested in discussing the causes of populism as a political movement of reaction to societal transnationalization or European integration. Instead, this chapter will advance a theoretical reflection about the constitutional structures of modern society and its relations with different forms of political representation. The central argument of this chapter is the following: The gradual process of de-constitutionalization taking hold of the process of European integration (Goldoni and

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Christodoulidis 2015; Wilkinson 2018) gives room to the emergence of different types of discourses on representation that halts the temporalization and the openness of societal self-images to the future, making them similar to what Lefort called unifying forms of representation (Lefort 1986a, b: 214–224). On the one hand, we have a technocratic discourse that replaces political struggles based on the language of interests by the idea that society as a whole is available to social theories about consumer behavior1 : the social is thus understood almost exclusively from the standpoint of narrow economic theories on the individual and on human rationality (Koskenniemi 2007; Joerges 2013; Holmes 2014). On the other hand, we witness the emergence of all-encompassing discourses on representation that try to fill the idea of procedural constitutional legitimation with substantial conceptions of the people (Blokker 2019a). In both cases, society suffers under the narrowing of its semantical possibilities regarding the future and replaces it by linear ideas of time governed by non-contingent economic imperatives or by the manifest destiny of the people conceived as a unified collective actor (the People-as-One). To this extent, populist constitutionalism may not be the biggest threat for modern constitutional democracies or to European integration itself. It may be the symptom of a much deeper movement. Indeed, if we look at the debate on European integration in the last decades, it seems to oscillate between a critique of an authoritarian economic integration advanced by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Commission through legal means exempt of any democratic legitimation (Grimm 2016; Brunkhorst 2010) and the increasing angst of a nationalist backlash. Both phenomena are connected; this is clear. But not only because emerging forms of populist constitutionalism are a dangerous reaction to the flaws of the former. They are connected because Europe suffers under a structural problem of (de)constitutionalization that narrows the possibilities of social imagination. To make this argument I will give some steps back and enter the theoretical terrain of constitutional sociology and political philosophy.

1 On how liberal theories on microeconomic behavior shape the understanding of political problems as consumer problems, see: Olsen (2016).

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Political Modernity Between “Functional Differentiation” and “Democratic Revolution”

The description of modern society as the result of a gradual process of social differentiation belongs to the common places of the social sciences. Indeed, one may define, as Luhmann does, modernity as a social order consisting of the emergence of different social sectors evolving and expanding in their own right, while becoming increasingly detached of any overarching controlling center (Luhmann 1997a). Accordingly, modern economy becomes a market economy, decentralized and responsible for organizing production and distributing goods; thus the economic system does no longer operate subject to hierarchical structures such as a centralized household or a religious authority. Similarly, the law begins to operate according to its own rules; what is lawful is defined exclusively in legal terms, even if norms are at odds with the moral feelings of social majorities. Science increasingly depends only on its own internal criteria, such as the consistency of theories, methods and publishing standards. The arts can be immoral and has to look only at the aesthetical meaning produced by artists, critics and the public. And this happens with almost every social domain. The differentiation of a modern political system means that politics becomes a social system operating with a specific function and with a generalized form of communication. Its function, for Luhmann, consists of making available for society a specific capacity for collectively binding decision-making (Luhmann 2000: 84). Its medium of communication is power, which becomes distributed within the system among those who have political offices (the government) and those who have not (the opposition) (Luhmann 2000: 81). Functional differentiation ultimately changes the way in which individuals are included in society (Luhmann 1989; Farzin 2006). While in premodern European society individuals had a fixed position according to the ranks into which they were born, in modern society individuality results from the interactions each individual develops during her life with each functional system. One individual may have access to money or not,

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to education or not, and her life becomes the result of a career of such interactions. For the political system, justification of the exercise of power through hierarchical representations becomes gradually more implausible. After the Constitutional revolutions, decision-making processes are established with the help of legally structured procedures to replace the substantial representation of society by the Monarch (Luhmann 1990a: 180). The differentiation of the political system becomes a process of equalization and democratization, by which representation can only be understood as a sort of procedural (popular) sovereignty in which every individual (what at first causes conflict and resistance) shall participate. Finally, political organizations such as parliaments and government offices emerge in the core of the system (the state and its administrative structure), on the one side, and political parties, social movements and civil society organizations occupy its periphery, on the other side, competing for influence over increasingly proceduralized and conflictual political decision-making (Luhmann 2000: 244–265). Such an understanding of political modernity has some interesting consequences. First, it deprives politics of any social centrality. Indeed, for Luhmann, although politics may have the function of keeping society’s capacity for collectively binding decision-making, it does not mean that it represents the whole society. This is easily shown by the fact that legitimacy becomes more and more tantamount to popularity, a clear sign of weakness for those in power (Luhmann 1990b: 13–16), since they must provide for legitimacy using their own political resources and can no longer rely on religion or tradition. Furthermore, politics is unable to directly control other functional systems. The economy, for instance, may be irritated by governmental decisions as they might constrain its operations (e.g. through monetary fluctuation or regulation of competition), but it will only react according to its own forms of operation, that is, through mostly unpredictable shifts in supply and demand which are reproduced through monetary means (Luhmann 2000: 111–114). The same holds for other functional systems. Like Luhmann, Claude Lefort is also a theoretician of difference (Marchart 2007). For him, society must from the very beginning be understood as the result of difference, which he calls a division (Lefort 1986b: 192–195; Marchart 2000: 54). This is a consequence of the

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fact that society lacks any foundation and every description of society is already instituted by a difference: (…) [I]t is the social space which is instituted with the division, and is instituted only in so far as it appears to itself. Its differentiation through relations of kinship or class, through relation between state and civil society, is inseparable from the deployment of a discourse at a distance from the supposed real, a discourse which enunciates the order of the world. (Lefort 1986b: 194)

Society is therefore only possible because of a contingent unification of the difference between what it is and how it describes itself: its reality an the social order articulated through discourse. Society’s labile unity depends on a discourse that institutes itself as it conceals its division and its lack of any ultimate foundation or legitimacy. Yet, different as it is for Luhmann, Lefort argues that society’s identity can only come about through a political distinction: ultimately the distinction between those in command and those who are subject to power (Marchart 2000: 62–64; Lefort 2012: 142–155; Bignotto 2013: 42–46). For him, the discourse that represents the unification of society as a social order (concealing its division) is structured to produce and reproduce social relations based on power. And, therefore, power is at the core of social life; its role being “to institute society by signifying social identity – and only by relating to this representation/signification of identity can people relate to the space in which they live as a coherent ensemble” (Marchart 2000: 56). Against the idea that politics may be reduced to one functional system among others, Lefort argues that modernity is not the result of nonpolitical social changes coming from a social dimension with its own logic. Rather, the emergence of modernity is itself a political event. For him, “the fact that something like politics should have been circumscribed within social life at a given time has itself a political meaning” (Lefort 1988a: 11). For him, the inquire about politics cannot be limited to the space where political parties compete and where conflicts over administrative offices take place. It must be an exercise of understanding the very form of society, which is in reality also political.

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This becomes clear if one looks at how Lefort understands the transition to the democratic form of modern society. For him, under the ancient régime, “power was embodied in the person of the prince”, who was a mediator between mortals and gods or, as politics became secularized, between power and reason; the prince was “at once subject to the law and placed above laws, he condensed within his body, which was at once mortal and immortal, the principle that generated the order of the kingdom” (Lefort 1988a: 17). Following Tocqueville, he points out that the democratic revolution was a long-term process already taking place under the existence of the ancient régime (Lefort 1988a: 13–16). “New modes of sociability emerged as a result of the growth of individualism, progress in the equalization of conditions of which Tocqueville spoke and the development of the state administration, which tended to make the latter appear as an independent impersonal entity” (Lefort 1986a: 303). Under this emergent democratic political form, the exercise of power “is subject to the procedures of periodical redistributions” through elections that represent “the outcome of a controlled contest with permanent rules” (Lefort 1988a: 17). In the end, this would imply “an institutionalization of conflict” which makes the “locus of power an empty place” (Lefort 1988a: 17). Under a democratic society power can never really be fully and substantially represented: power now resides in society and emerges from popular suffrage. Interestingly, Lefort understands modern society, similarly to Luhmann, as a form of society that disentangles the language of power from the language of knowledge. “The modern democratic revolution is best recognized in this mutation: there is no power linked to a body”; the disincorporation of power means the disengagement of a civil society from the state and “the emergence of social relations, not only economic ones, but legal, educational and scientific” (Lefort 1986a: 303). The democratic disincorporation of power implies that there is no unifying identity between power and discourse that condenses the principles of organization of reason, law and knowledge. Therefore, “as power, law and knowledge become disentangled, a new relation to the real is established”; more precisely, “economic, technical, scientific, pedagogic and medical facts, for example, tend to be asserted, to be defined under the

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aegis of knowledge in accordance with norms that are specific to them” (Lefort 1988a: 18). Democracy becomes a form of social life and not only a form of organization of the political system. Or, better stated, it is a form of life, exactly because forms of life are always political. And under democracy, society becomes an instituted ungraspable society, which produces its own self-images through political struggles, mainly through struggles over the interpretation of (human) rights. This means that democracy establishes a new meaning for history, based on a permanent indeterminacy of what is about to come in the future. To this extent, Lefort sees a role for the political system which is much more important than the one ascribed by Luhmann. Since modern democratic politics disincorporates the body of power, it liberates society to deal with its own contingency, its own openness to an indeterminate future that must be built by society itself. In fact, this is not so different from Luhmann’s idea of modernity. But, while for Luhmann the internal openness of politics results from functional differentiation, for Lefort, one might say, social differentiation depends to a great extent on the fact that representation remains disincorporated and, to use his well-known slogan, the locus of power remains empty. These differences between our two political thinkers have important theoretical consequences for how we think the role of the political system in modern society. As I understand, these authors might complement each other in many ways, exactly because they depart from some similar premises and, at the same time, remain so different. In what follows, I will explore these differences and focus on how these two understandings of modern politics might be read in a complementary way that enrich our understanding of the modern constitutional form beyond the state.

9.3

Democratic Constitutionalization and the Risks of Totalitarian Rule

For Luhmann, the process of societal functional differentiation emerges as an accumulation of unlikely events. Interestingly, not the political system, but the legal system is identified in many ways as having been

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pivotal for modern functional differentiation given its role in the statebuilding process in early modernity. Paradigmatically, the law becomes a central condition to the differentiation of the political system through the constitutional mechanism. The constitution appears as a social artefact that legalizes the use of power and, by doing so, makes possible the articulation of power as an identifiable social object, available to public disputes and observation. When social power becomes differentiated thanks to the erosion of the unifying social discourses based on religious views, it may be handled in different ways, including through violence by private or public actors (e.g. economic groups like guilds or political sovereigns seeking power).2 The legalization of power neutralizes its use by private interests that may abuse of it, since under a legal constitution no authority is recognized if it is not in accordance with the law (Holmes 2013). As a consequence, the political system draws more and more on the legal code (lawful/unlawful) to operationalize its decision-making processes. This is made through the establishment of (legalized) electoral, legislative and administrative procedures. The transformations taking place within the legal system in early modern Europe were crucial to give form to the constitutionalization process. The law which was being claimed against rulers and as a tool to solve social problems in other functional systems (such as the economy or science) was in need for a solution to the problem of its own foundation. The question was simple: which law should be deemed valid? Substantial conceptions of natural law were no longer able to answer this question properly, since they used to make sense only under hierarchical forms of social differentiation where there was an authoritative instance that was “naturally” (or religiously) legitimated to state what the law should be. The constitution makes possible the foundation of the law by law itself (Luhmann 1993: 98–110). By introducing a legal distinction between ordinary and constitutional law, the latter emerges as the law in face of

2

This is the phenomenon described by Machiavelli that came to be called the “Machiavellian Moment” by Pocock (Pocock 1975: 3:1–9; Marchart 2007: 99).

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which ordinary law must be proofed (as constitutional or unconstitutional) in its own legality: the validity of law can now be founded in its own legal terms in a recursive and reflexive system. Luhmann understands the constitution as a structural coupling between the legal and the political systems, by which both systems establish their own differentiation and, at the same time, institutionalize mechanisms of reciprocal irritation, without losing their own specificity (Luhmann 1990a: 201–208; 1993: 468–481). On the one hand, law becomes a “second-code” for power, whereas all power becomes legalized. Legislation surely attempts to synchronize political and legal expectations, but as every lawyer is aware, one only knows the legal meaning of legislation, once it has been properly adjudicated in the courts (Luhmann 1993: 427). On the other hand, the law externalizes quests over its legitimacy to the political system, which is supposed to be democratic and, as such, ought to eliminate the arbitrary use of power that might destroy the autonomous functioning of the law. In this context, constitutions usually contain catalogues of (individual and collective) human rights that are intended to protect the differentiation of society itself (Luhmann 1965). Luhmann understands the constitution as an important evolutionary achievement (Luhmann 1990a: 208). But it is, still, the result of accidental events that cannot be specifically ascribed neither to the political system nor the legal system alone. Modernization results from a broader process of differentiation that involves the legal system, a monetary economy, science, education, politics and other functional systems. He understands constitutional revolutions as the culmination of processes in which the emerging modern society takes hold of changes that were already in place. They are moments to express society’s illusions of omnipotence, to play songs and make celebratory declarations (Brunkhorst 2009). To a certain extent, Luhmann seems to argue that democratic constitutions are an unavoidable evolutionary tendency that, at some point, will be established everywhere almost as a functional necessity (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019: 822–826).3 3

This is clear in early texts by Luhmann and in his writings until the beginning of the 1990s. After that, he seemed to be irritated by the reality of world peripheries, especially by Neves’

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For Lefort, modern democratic revolutions are not only the outcome of a broader gradual process of differentiation. For him, democratic revolutions seem to be much more than occasions for “celebratory declarations” and “solemn chants”, where the people stage their “illusions of omnipotence” in the face of social processes that took place outside the political system (Luhmann 1990a: 176, 180, 184). The democratic revolution is the very condition of possibility for the differentiation of social discourse in different social spheres. The absence of the body that incarnates power makes the unification of law and knowledge under the same discourse impossible. So, “there is no law that can be fixed, whose articles cannot be contested, whose foundations are not susceptible of being called into question” (Lefort 1986a: 303–304). Paradoxically, division becomes part of the very discourse about the unity of society, which thus becomes ungraspable, uncontrollable, delivered to its own divisions and indeterminacy: Modern democratic society seems to me, in fact, like a society in which power, law and knowledge are exposed to a radical indetermination, a society that has become the theatre of an uncontrollable adventure so that what is instituted never becomes established, the known remains undermined by the unknown, the present proves to be undefinable, covering many different social times which are staggered in relation to one another within simultaneity – or definable only in terms of some fictitious future; an adventure such that the quest for identity cannot be separated from the experience of division. (Lefort 1986a: 305)

Since the place of power becomes “empty”, as Lefort says, division becomes exposed and the consequences of this fact can only be tackled within society. Different discourses take hold of this task in a way similar to what Luhmann describes as the self-reflexive recursivity of communication that assumes the role for social reproduction in the respective functional systems of modern society. This means that society now is the only instance responsible to produce its own self-images, its own projections of itself into the future. The image of the body that was descriptions of constitutionalism in Brazil, where there is no sign that modern constitutionalism will be established in the same way as it did in Europe (Neves 1992, 2017).

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disincorporated by the democratic revolution becomes the object of permanent self-construction. For Lefort, however, the disincorporation of power and the exposure of society’s indeterminacy is in no way permanent (neither necessary). “There is always a possibility that the logic of democracy will be disrupted in a society in which the foundations of the political order and the social order vanish, in which that which has been established never bears the seal of full legitimacy” (Lefort 1988a: 19). This disruption may assume the form of new emergent ideologies, among which he mentions technocratic, authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies that try to reunify society under the same discourse about power (Lefort 1986b: 214–236). Curiously, the exposure of society to “radical indetermination” and to the “uncontrollable adventure” of democracy is also felt as a threat. As the body politics becomes represented by the anonymous power of a people that has no face and appears only as an empty place or, in other words, as the result of permanent and onerous struggles over its own definition, “we see the development of the fantasy of the Peopleas-One, the beginnings of a quest for a substantial identity, for a social body which is welded to its head, for an embodying power, for a state free from division” (Lefort 1988a: 20). The idea that the making of society is entirely delivered to society itself, which must decide about its future only by itself is frightening. And even more frightening is the idea that the decisions that define society’s self-image and future might be made by the people, including those without any proper qualification. It is significant, for instance, that for a long time not only liberal and conservatives resisted universal suffrage, but also part of the socialist movements (Lefort 1988a: 19). Modern forms of totalitarianism and authoritarianism are an answer to this threat, promising to purge society of the perils of social division and to eliminate the indetermination of the burdensome democratic experience which may assume the form of distressing tensions between conflicting parties. Paradoxical as it may seem, modern authoritarianism is only possible under the conditions established by the democratic revolution (Bataillon 2013). Modern authoritarianism cannot be equalized to earlier forms of despotism or Monarchy. Indeed, the incorporation of power in the body of the king was not exactly political; rather it concealed the political

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and the division upon which society is (un)founded. The prince’s body pointed towards an other-worldly dimension. His body was the actualization of the body of the Christ and condensed the dimensions of power, law and knowledge, but the king “was supposed to obey to a superior power”; he was “above the law and subject to the law”, he “possessed wisdom, but he was subject to reason” (Lefort 1986a: 305–306). The social order was not only a political order, but a holistic order where also the political was effaced. This is different in the cases of modern totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Especially in totalitarian regimes, the leader “coincides with himself, as society is supposed to coincide with itself ” (Lefort 1986a: 306); his body is a mortal body which politically condenses the supposed social virtues. The (modern) political system of the state and its bureaucracy assume the task of reunifying society and its divisions through the mortal body of the leader or the party organization. Lefort argues that totalitarian representation under soviet rule combined, for instante, the image of the body with that of a machine, and not with Christ (Lefort 1986a: 301). In systems theoretical language, one may say that modern authoritarianism seeks a primacy for the political system over every other functional systems (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019: 826). This leads Lefort to notice a redefinition of the role of time and history in society, which is important to understand how totalitarianism operates on the level of the production of society’s self-image in contrast to the democratically institutionalized form of society: Democracy proves to be historical par excellence, a society which, in its very form, welcomes and preserves indeterminacy and which provides a remarkable contrast with totalitarianism which, because it is constructed under the slogan of creating a new man, claims to understand the law of its organization and development, and which, in the modern world, secretly designates itself as a society without history. (Lefort 1986a: 305)

By stating that democratic society is a “historical society par excellence”, Lefort means that it is open to its own future, which they cannot control, but that it is also the product of its own decisions, whereby democratic society must understand itself, produce its own identity, discuss its possibilities and decide what it will become as the outcome of

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this process, without knowing beforehand what this outcome will turn out to be. Totalitarian efforts to efface society’s indeterminacy imply an attempt to replace the consciousness of this indeterminacy by a unifying discourse (Lefort 1986b: 186–188, 215–216; 1986c: 285–287). Totalitarian and authoritarian politics seek a reincorporation of the representation of the body politics through substantial representation, what can only be achieved by the negation of social division and, therefore, of the autonomy of different social dimensions such as the law, arts, education, science, which shall all be unified under a condensed political discourse (Lefort 1986b: 215). This reunification usually assumes the form of a political telos (a political aim), which may be presented as society’s destiny (Lefort 1999: 158–160) and implies the occultation of its historicity. In the case of the Soviet Union, it was the Logical Science of History (dialectical materialism) that assumed discursive control of the law, sciences, arts, education, etc. Under Nazi-Germany it was the idea of a “Law of Life” (Lefort 1988b: 400), an ethno-nationalist ideology that has some similarities with contemporary forms of ethnonationalist populism (Möller 2020). The fundamental division of society is furthermore hidden through the creation of an enemy, the absolute other against which the real people (the People-as-One) is defined and distinguished (Lefort 1986b: 287). The enemy may be ethnic minorities, opposition parties or the functional elites. Finally, Lefort points out that, in the end, the invisibility of contingency, which is also the invisibility of power in other domains of social life, becomes a form of legitimation of new social hierarchies, such as the one between the party bureaucracy (the elite of the proletariat ) and the common people. As Lefort puts it: “inequality and invisibility go hand in hand” (Lefort 1988b: 404). Through the substantialization of political representation and the emergence of authoritarian rule, the societal historicity opened by the democratic revolution would have been gradually spoiled and new forms of social hierarchy could become legitimate.

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The Institutionalization of Social Indeterminacy and the Temporalization of Societal Self-Images

Lefort’s idea that democratic societies are “historical societies” (Lefort 1986a: 305) is strikingly similar to what Luhmann means by “the temporalization of societal semantics” as one of the many consequences of shift to functional differentiation. Also for Luhmann, modernity inaugurates the idea of society’s consciousness about its own contingency (Luhmann 1980: 260–271). That is to say, in modern society social discourse in different social systems registers the fact that the future must not be the same as the past (Luhmann 1980: 272–280; 1997b: 997–1010). This means that time is introduced as a central element of social communication and society replaces religiously conceived ideas of eternity as its temporal horizon by the idea that reality results from an endless succession of events (Luhmann 1980: 271; 1997b: 997). As a consequence, in the eighteenth century the very meaning of history begins to change. History ceases to be understood as a sum of narratives which have a paradigmatic meaning for society based on a static self-representation of what society should be (a reverence towards tradition). Following Koselleck, Luhmann points out that history, in modernity, begins to be seen as a process that can be observed and studied as an object of research: It is subject to periodicization, to reflections over causal relations, to struggles over its interpretation and it comes to be framed by grand philosophies of history (Koselleck 1972a: 602, 641). The narratives about history are themselves temporalized and opened to discussion. Like Koselleck’s, Luhmann claims that temporalization is however always ensued by politicization (Koselleck 1972b; Luhmann 1997b). Initially, progress becomes a central and controversial concept and the emergence of an incipient public opinion witnesses the rise of a dispute between conservative and progressive conceptions of history. As Luhmann puts it, temporalization means no less than the visibility of social contingency. Accordingly, the present becomes the point of change: If everything depends on the stream of events, from moment to

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moment, every moment is a call to action (Luhmann 1980: 278). Some want to change society and, paradoxically, some want to act to keep it as it is. At first, contingency becomes visible, but kept under control by philosophies (grand narratives) that intend to reveal the scientific (or logical) course of history (Koselleck 1972a: 647–653; 1973: 112–115). Soon enough, also these philosophies of history become object of politicization, as they diverge in their understanding of the logic of history. Political struggles become more acute as different conceptions about society’s future diverge. Social critique becomes crisis. And crisis will soon mean civil war (Koselleck 1973: 105–107). The French revolution may be understood exactly as the collective realization of this transformation. “After the French Revolution, social reference for everything that exists or is seen as valid is set in movement: society itself becomes movement” (Luhmann 1980: 294). From now on, society must produce its own self-descriptions through the proceduralization of its own internal self-observation. Luhmann grasps this process of semantical temporalization as the result of a long-term evolutionary process of society’s functional differentiation. From the outset, the political system profits from societal transformations leading to individualization and to the historicization of social relations. Hierarchical forms of representation based on rank structures become obsolete and politicians must rely only on public support (popularity) to keep the political system able to make collective binding decisions. On the one hand, democratization depends on the inclusion of potentially every individual in its procedures (democratization). On the other hand, semantical temporalization fosters the politicization of societal conceptions and the ideologization of political struggles. But political conflict becomes formalized into legal procedures like elections and legislation that soon become stereotyped according to the difference between government and opposition. Political ideologies offer not much more than simplified scripts for political decision-making that soon become absorbed by the technification of power through law and the bureaucratization of administrative work (Luhmann 2000: 166–168). The constitutionalization of politics emerges as the structural articulation of political differentiation. Notwithstanding, it does not mean that politics governs society as its all-powerful center.

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As already explained, the function of the political system lies, for Luhmann, in the provision of society’s capacity for collectively binding decision-making (Luhmann 2000: 81). These political decisions are made through official procedures such as elections, legislation, judicial or administrative processes (by the government) and registered by other systems, such as the law, the economy or the educational system as irritations in their environment that externally constrain their operation, but do not control their self-referent reproduction (Luhmann 2000: 111–114; Nassehi 2004: 105). Luhmann seems to suppose that the collectivity that must be kept able to decide politically is a given. However, as Armin Nassehi pointedly argues, there is no people, no society that precedes politics: “The people of people’s sovereignty is not a precondition of the political, but rather its outcome, its self-generated audience” (Nassehi 2003: 149). Nassehi proposes a correction in Luhmann’s definition, stating that the function of the political system consists not only in keeping society’s capacity for collectively binding decision-making, but also in the “production and provision of the social visibility and accountability of the collectivity” (Nassehi 2003: 149). This argument is similar to constructivist arguments that try to overcome the dichotomy between constituent and constituted power by claiming that the collective identity which founds a constitution can only be conceived as a self-constituted identity that performatively defines itself in the continuous political process of its self-constituting (Lindahl 2007). At this point, it becomes clear that Lefort can be helpful for a conceptualization of modern constitutional democracy based on a theory of social differentiation. Indeed, we can learn from both, Lefort and Luhmann, about the role of politics in opening society to its own indeterminacy (what Luhmann calls “temporalization of social semantics”) and about what the structural threats to this process are. We do not have to agree with Lefort that modernity is in itself a strictly political phenomenon to follow him regarding an important point. That is, the differentiation of politics might be the result of long-term processes of gradual differentiation that are too complex to be ascribed to only one social dimension as the political, just as Luhmann describes. Yet, Lefort’s definition of what he calls the democratic revolution might shed light

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on a particular feature of the function of the political system in modern society that Luhmann fails to address. If we understand the function of the political system not only as the provision of the capacity for collectively binding decision-making, but also as the production of the very collectivity that must be bound by these decisions, it soon becomes clear that this function has a deep impact on the broader phenomenon of social and functional differentiation. As Lefort understands, the capacity of opening society to its own future through the proceduralization of the production of its self-images represents a condition for law, science, the arts, education and the economy to develop their own self-reflexive discourses. Under totalitarian regimes, this is exactly this consciousness about societal indeterminacy that becomes gradually obliterated (Lefort 1988b,1999). This does not mean that empirical contingency and indeterminacy vanishes completely. Of course, people under totalitarian political orders still must count, for instance, on price variations or make decisions over how they spend at least part of their time. But people under the ancient régime also had a language for describing this sort of everyday decisions, dealing with some dimensions of social contingency. Lefort’s point is that, under authoritarianism, social indeterminacy becomes gradually compressed as discourses about justice, legality, aesthetics and education are more and more subject to a unifying discourse that condenses the production of that constitutional collectivity under a static self-image of society, usually an image of the “People-as-one”, exempt of division. Gradually, these social sectors are subjugated by the unifying discourse of power, witnessing a gradual enclosement of its semantic spaces for dealing with contingency. Lefort’s description of political modernity lacks nonetheless some degree of specificity. He offers no clear explanation of how the democratic form of society comes about or how democratic forms of societal self-representation degenerate in substantial ideas of collectivity that obliterate social indeterminacy. For Lefort, democracy seems to depend exclusively on itself. It emerges as social hierarchies erode, but he offers no clear understanding how this process unfolds. To be fair, Lefort has also no clear conceptualization of what makes democracy an institutional political form.

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Lefort’s contributions are nevertheless of great value to understanding functional differentiation as a contingent societal form that may also be threatened by forms of dedifferentiation that obliterate societal indeterminacy. Here we must include not only the authoritarian ideologies of Twentieth Century, but also contemporary forms of populist constitutionalism and technocracy. Lefort’s studies on totalitarianism show how new emerging hierarchies may become legitimate under totalitarian rule; so that the role of politics in opening society to its own indeterminacy can have deep consequences to functional differentiation as a whole. Thereby, Lefort’s theoretical contributions enrich and complement Luhmann’s description of the process of differentiation of the modern political system. Similarly, Luhmann’s description of the process of political constitutionalization offers an elucidative description of how modernity is the result of a long-term process of functional differentiation that becomes institutionalized in a legal and political form through the modern constitution. The constitutional mechanism is, however, not an inevitable destiny of modern society. Neither can it be dismissed as an achievement without which functional differentiation can just keep its normal course.4 Modern political constitutions establish a mechanism by which society becomes able to produce its own collective identity. This open self-constructed collectivity is the result of the proceduralization of politics and of the struggles over society’s self-images made possible by constitutionalization. Constitutionalization also makes it harder that any attempt to unify societal self-identity under a static image such as the idea of the People-as-One can be successful. But if constitutional mechanisms fail, and they might fail, we may have to expect the emergence of exactly this type of suppression of societal consciousness about its own indeterminacy.

4

This is more important than one may think, since there is a whole new tradition of constitutional theory that almost completely dismisses the political constitution as one of the conditions of modern functional differentiation. See, for example: Teubner (2004, 2012).

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Populist Constitutionalism, Technocracy and the European Constitutional Crisis

Populist movements spread in different countries and continents in the last decade, and this justifies the attention they have attracted. In Europe, nationalist populist movements were to a great extent successful in framing the process of integration as a threat for national ways of life, to the integrity of national identities and as a project of domination by cultural and economic elites in detriment of the common peoples of Europe. Although populist constitutional projects have some common traits when they are in power (Blokker 2019b), they usually assume different forms according to different contexts, what justifies a specific (national) approach to specific cases. It is important, however, to understand populism in a broader context as a constitutional phenomenon that is not limited to the national political contexts where it takes place. It is necessary to look at the tectonic plates where states are embedded, the constitutional structures of modern politics, to understand what kind of ruptures and continuities populism puts in place. In other words, the research on populist politics must take into account changes of modern constitutional structures that set the conditions for the emergence and advancement of populist forms of constitutionalism. Taking on the lessons from the constitutional reflections that were presented above based on the theoretical dialogue between Niklas Luhmann and Claude Lefort, we may shed some light on the phenomenon beyond its manifestations in national political settings. Sure, one may define populist politics in a rather broad manner, simply as the use of the difference between “the people” and “the elites”. Accordingly, populism could be seen as a re-entry of this difference, which is part of every political system, in the political system itself (see Möller in this volume), be it as a political tactics to mobilize the electorate or as part of deeper constitutional politics (focused on the struggle of how decision-making is structured and institutionalized through constitutional law). As I understand it, this definition remains, however, too thin, since it neither covers the constitutional dimension of populism as a political project, nor it is able to distinguish

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populism from common democratic politics. In fact, the distinction between the people and political (or functional) elites as a rhetorical device of mobilization in democratic politics is more common than one may like to admit. Political struggles in democracies are necessarily based on differences. Be it differences organized along the lines of party politics, ideological struggles, conflicts between more or less organized social movements etc. These ideological division may accrue and assume the form of differences between values (e.g. freedom/equality), social classes (workers/capitalists), aesthetic preferences (high culture/popular culture) and also the difference between the general public and functional elites. And all these differences are often used by political actors in the democratic context of pluralist constitutionalism to activate the electorate. Invoking the people as a political device for challenging governing elites is something that also established parties do under certain circumstances. Moreover, it would be a mistake to equate every political project that claims to represent the people against functional elites as an inclusive populist project, on the national, on the international or the transnational level. After all, if every leftist (or inclusive) political program may be called populist, the concept loses its usefulness to capture the specificity of populism as a broader phenomenon that includes reactionary and exclusionary forms of activation of the idea of the people. To this extent we may speak of populism in at least two dimensions. The first (that we may call populism 1) refers to the use of the difference between people and elites as a rhetorical device for the mobilization of the demos as a legitimatory resource within the democratic framework of constitutional democracy. In this sense, the populist strategy consists of a sharpening of the use of that difference as a rhetorical device, which may be more or less useful depending on specific political circumstances. So, for instance, during political crisis, the difference between the “people” and the “elites” may favor the displacement of one political elite by emerging political movements that become the “new elite” and will soon become also exposed to the same kind of challenge. One should remember that the “iron law of oligarchy” condemns almost every emerging political movement to some degree of bureaucratization in the long run (Michels 1999: 342–356). The second dimension (populism 2) is the one that refers to the transformation of political representation and

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the modern constitutional structures. It aims a substantialization of the mechanisms of political representation in what has been defined by some authors as populist constitutionalism. I think that this concept is more relevant for our current discussion. As defined by Blokker, populist constitutionalism is itself a constitutional project, offering an alternative vision for political representation and for the role of the constitution (Blokker 2019a, b). Blokker offers a sharp description of the populist constitutional project, showing that, as soon as populist constitutional movements (populism 2) take over, they pursue an instrumentalization of constitutional rules, in order to advance very specific political goals. For these movements, political pluralism as it is practiced in multiparty systems is deemed to be an elitist game through which interest groups capture the true will of people. Therefore, populists of this kind try to undermine political pluralism (Müller 2016: 1–6, 15–25; Urbinati 2019: 1–16), eliminating the structures of diarchic political representation (Urbinati 2019: 162–167)—based on the separation between public opinion (for Urbinati, tantamount to the will of the people) and the institutional structures of government. Their ultimate goal becomes the replacement of the structures of diarchic political representation by a direct form of representation which is usually based on the personal figure of a strongman that incorporates the values of the real People (Müller 2017: 744–764; Blokker 2019a: 541–543). By claiming to represent the only real people, which exists prior to the constitutional order and cannot be thoroughly conceived by its procedural artificialities, they transform occasional political majorities in the only real and substantial majority, the true manifestation of the Will of the People. “The homogeneous idea of the People as expressed by means of historical, cultural, and identitarian elements (the nation)” (Blokker 2019b: 120) becomes close to Lefort’s idea of the “People-as-One”, which should efface society’s division through an unifying representation of society’s identity. Of course, not every form of authoritarianism implies an encompassing form of totalitarianism (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019: 830–831) and populist authoritarian movements may be appeased by majoritarian forms of oppression and partial exclusion of those who, for them, do not belong to the “real people” because of their opinions, ethnic treats, cultural origins or social preferences (Ahlers and Stichweh

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2019: 826; Blokker 2019b: 120). Populist conceptions of the people, in this second sense, remain nevertheless based on unifying tendencies that have clear authoritarian implications, threatening society’s openness to the future and consciousness about its own indeterminacy. So, by hyper-politicizing society, trying to overcome social division through a unifying idea of the “People-as-One”, populist constitutional movements narrow society’s capacity of building its own self-images. As we learned from Lefort, this means that the very idea of collectivity becomes static, defined by the leaders of the movement, what in the end implies that hierarchies must be introduced to stabilize the risk of destroying the hegemonic articulation of power that establishes the people as a supposedly inclusionary device.5 And, as we learned from our joint interpretation of Lefort and Luhmann’s concept of constitutionalization, there is no temporalization of societal self-images without the structural correspondent for this temporalization, that is, democratic constitutionalization. The idea that constitutional procedures are not less than an ideological device of the bourgeoisie for the domination of the people (Laclau 2005) is itself a theoretical artefact of static conceptions of how society produces its self-reflection. To this extent, one should not mistake the populist constitutional project by political strategies that try to animate and intensify the democratic potentials of democratic constitutionalism (Möller 2017: 258–260).6 Although some scholars contend that populist politics may be a way to legitimately activate the idea of popular sovereignty (Laclau 2005; Tushnet 2019), this seems to be a rather problematic understanding of the meaning of populist movements. While populism in the 5 In my opinion, Laclau’s critique on Lefort misses the point exactly because Laclau explains society as made entirely by (politically conceived) subjects (Laclau 2005: 165–171). If everything that there is, are political subjects and their discursive articulations of society, there is always going to be a hegemony of one of these subjects. Including democracy is an hegemonial form imposed by one subject. So, there is no possibility of understanding democracy as a procedural constitutionalization of power. Democratic constitutionalism appears maybe as the result “bourgeois hegemony”. 6 Some authors, inspired mainly by Laclau (Laclau 2005: 117–124), argue that the logics of populism might be the only way to activate the popular dimension of representative democracy against authoritarian forms of populism. For them, since authoritarian populists activate a necessary and latent dimension of democratic constitutionalism (namely, popular sovereignty), it is almost impossible to confront them without also appealing to some form of populism.

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first sense (populism 1) amounts almost to a common element of democratic life, the second form of populism (populism 2), which we called populist constitutionalism, is rather incompatible with democracy as a political form. And just as the populist strategy (populism 1) can be activated by left- of right-wing politics, the same holds for different forms of populist constitutionalism (populism 2). Inclusiveness is not a necessary trait of populist movements. In fact, populist constitutionalism is not the only threat to democratic politics. Technocratic conceptions of political decision-making also claim to replace society’s constitutional construction of self-images, as they use the scientific system to expand their influence over politics (Ahlers and Stichweh 2019: 825–826). Curiously, technocracy also claims to have the best solutions for the people regardless the outcomes of democratic processes of decision-making and representative politics. If one looks one or two decades back in the European constitutional debate, one clearly identifies a critique of technocratic authoritarianism deemed as a threat to the modern constitutional form. Interestingly, many aspects of these criticisms were incorporated into populist discourse as a way of defending democracy against Europe’s anti-democratic technocratic elites. Perhaps, an analysis of the ways in which technocratic power structures compete with the representational structures of democratic constitutionalism could shed light on the relationship between technocracy and populism. And the emergence of both phenomena may be rooted in deep transformations of the modern constitutional form that may become clear if we observe the case of European integration. Indeed, the European project of integration became a privileged locus for governance and for the ascendency of technocracy. As market-based integration gradually imposed itself as an imperative force to the detriment of political forms of constitutionalization, the integration process slowly empowered a technocratic elite endowed with a very narrow mindset of what society should look like. Namely, according to a representation of collective existence that in many ways revealed itself to be also a sort totalitarian image of society; not as a representation of the People-as-One, but as a collectivity organized as an arrangement of consumers exclusively through market based forms of socialization (Olsen 2016).

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From its beginning, when integration was seen as a necessity to avoid war and fascism, Europe has seen the eruption of a process of institutional building that had two faces (Brunkhorst 2014). The first was a constitutional one, led by the Council and supported by national parliaments and national constitutions through political negotiations in the form of traditional international treaties (Grimm 2016; Joerges 2015). The second was a non-constitutional integration, which took shape especially after the Treaty of Rome (1957) and was deepened by the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). This process was—not totally intentionally—led by the ECJ, which took decisive steps in important decisions in 1963 and 1964 towards a faster economic integration.7 Albeit initially understood as decisive steps towards a closer European constitutionalization (Weiler 1991), those two decisions resulted in fact in a wide process of political de-constitutionalization. As pointed out by Dieter Grimm, as a consequence of those two decisions by the ECJ, a process of overconstitutionalization (ÜberKonstitutionalisierung ) has taken place, by which political decisions that should produce new (primary and secondary) European Law, respectively through treaties and decisions of the Council, were transferred to unpolitical bodies, namely, the ECJ itself and the Commission (Grimm 2016: 112–116). For him, this step was seen as a transformation of every European regulation produced by the Commission to give executory form for the treaties in a sort of law of constitutional rank, since any European regulation had now precedence in the face of the national law of member States in matters regarding economic integration. Consequently, European integration could only mean the interpretation and execution of the treaties as an implementation of the four basic economic freedoms the (free circulation of people, commodities, services and capital), as interpreted, namely, by the ECJ and the Commission. These two unpolitical bodies were thus responsible for advancing the European project mainly as market-based integration. And soon “de-constitutionalization” became “the flipside of over-constitutionalization” (Wilkinson 2018: 3). 7

The two cases were Van Gend & Loos v. Netherlands (1963), which made European law directly applied to the European citizens in concrete legal conflicts, and Costa v. ENEL (1964), which established the supremacy of European law in the face of national law regarding issues related to the process of economic integration.

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Accordingly, any form of intervention in the markets from the part of politically constituted member states that could threaten those four freedoms were deemed to be illegal. This meant not less than a thorough de-constitutionalization of crucial aspects of social life not only on the transnational level of European economic life, but also on the national level: Social policy and many forms of collectively decided measures for the redistribution of wealth were simply forbidden and taken out of the hands of the politically constituted polities of the member states (Joerges 2004). The technocratically minded elites of Europe took over and the ordoliberal ideology that was only one among other concurring selfimages of the European integration assumed a totalizing character, the only form of authorized societal representation of the European people (Wilkinson 2019). The lack of a political constitutional structure on the European level was on the root of this process. As a result of a integration process that eroded constitutional processes, the self-production of societal representation through democratic procedures became gradually insufficient and precarious. Power gradually evolved as a product of technocratic calculations made by experts, managers, economists and a few elites. As technocracy advanced, politically constituted collective decisions became compressed. And democracies were threatened in their capacity of staging society’s division (the difference between itself and its representations) in a collective exercise of imagining their own existence, in the present and in the future. Therefore, static forms of self-reflection filled the void. On the national level, populism emerges as the flipside of the same crisis. While technocracy assumes the grip of power on the transnational level, unifying society’s self-image under the sign of ideological knowledge, populist constitutionalism emerged as unifying formula on the national level. An emergent form of representation for a society which slowly became incapable of conceiving its own indeterminacy. The hollowing out of the national state’s capacity of producing temporalized self-reflections by the (de-constitutionalized) European project corresponds to the replacement of the national constitutional politics of inclusion by the emerging representation of national European peoples as “Peoples-as-One”.

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Concluding Remarks: Perspectives for a European Reconstitutionalization

The differentiation of the political system gives room for the establishment of institutionalized processes of production of a self-defining collectivity, which is the author and the addressee of its own decisions. This process makes possible what Lefort understands as society’s openness to its own indeterminacy and what Luhmann would call the temporalization of society’s semantics. This phenomenon has a constitutional form that is neither necessary, nor definitive. It is contingent and may be jeopardized. At the same time, as the constitutional form of political modernity becomes compressed by new forms of emergent power, the social production of societal self-images may come to a halt. Ideologies occupy the place of power and society becomes unified under partial discursive logics that use power as a way of hiding societal indeterminacy. The populist constitutional project is one candidate that has emerged in the last years to offer society a self-image that it is increasingly unable to produce. But populism seems to be, much more, a reaction to a deeper process of transformation. As I brought up in the last section, the case of European integration has evolved as a highly contradictory process of political de-constitutionalization. Within the European Union and even more in the context of the European Monetary Union (EMU), crucial decisions that in other contexts shaped the very self-understanding of entire collectivities shifted to non-political (mainly technocratic) bodies that decide mostly according to very narrow (liberal) understandings of what the European collectivity—and by consequence the people of Europe—should be. This shift has many reasons. In part, it is the result of functional processes of transnational economic integration that can be hardly constitutionalized thanks to a lack of political structures on the transnational level. Constitutionalizing power beyond the state has been a challenge for which no one yet has given an adequate answer. At the same time, transnational economic integration has given place to the rise of private forms of authority that erode the basic structures of modern political constitutionalism.

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To this extent, populism is not the only source of authoritarian semantics in Europe. Perhaps not even the most prevalent. Technocratic forms of decision-making still are the most important power driving de-constitutionalization. European technocratic rule restructure almost every social domain according to very narrow conceptions of human life: mostly based on hegemonic (uncriticizable) liberal models of marketbased socialization (Wilkinson 2019). Certainly, liberal technocracy has differences when compared to liberal ideology in the context of political constitutional regimes. While liberal political parties must contend over the collective construction of societal self-images within the frameworks of political democracy, technocracy doesn’t use the language of politics at all. It produces binding decisions and binding regulation and presents them as indisputable “scientific knowledge”. But science itself is a functional system that depends on society’s capacity to set free its autonomous self-reflective processes. According to Lefort, also true science depends to some extent on democracy to operate autonomously. A society that becomes unable to guarantee that “the place of power remains empty” should doubt the scientific character of knowledge advanced by its technocratic elites. There are attempts to reimagine and repoliticize the European project. To this extent, the pleas for an inclusive populism that could activate Europe’s national peoples towards the repoliticization of the collective European project are not preposterous. Movements as DiEM25 or “European Alternatives” are important attempts to reclaim the constitutional structures of Europe and to establish constitutional procedures where today there are only symbolic political strategies of legitimation for the project of European elites (see Blokker in this volume). While they struggle to challenge the hegemonic economic project, they repoliticize the European project as a whole (see Šrám in this volume). But this is not enough. It is necessary more than contestation and repoliticization of the economic ideology of European elites. The constitutionalization of European democracy must not mean an attempt to revive the constitutional treaty that was refused in 2005. But it certainly must fulfill at least two conditions: it must consist of procedures that somehow include the addressees of European decisions in the

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decision-making processes, and it must allow to the conflictual politicization of these decisions by a reflexive collectivity that depends on them to conceive itself as a collectivity with an open future in the first place. Notwithstanding, such movements cannot be grasped as another form of populist constitutionalism. They should be understood as political movements struggling for a democratic constitutionalization of Europe. As they strive for the repoliticization of Europe, they are helping the creation of the collectivity that may act as the constituent power of a future European democratic constitution. To this extent, they should not understand themselves as populist constitutional movements, but rather as the successors of the constitutional revolutionary tradition that founded constitutional polities in the XVIII and XIX centuries. Now, the revolutionary struggle over constitutionalization has gone transnational. This might be a proof that, in the end, Luhmann might have been wrong: constitutions may indeed depend on political movements that can carry out the work of building its institutional structures. And constitutional revolutions might be more than empty celebratory moments. They are necessarily the task of radical political movements.

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10 Transnational Populism in Context: The UN, the EU, and Beyond Kolja Möller

10.1 Introduction Nationalist movements are on the rise; the long list ranges from Donald Trump’s presidency to the successes of right-wing parties in the EU. Not least, nationalist alliances between governments, the media, and social movements have been able to undermine trans- and international institutions or to constitute blocking minorities (Petersmann 2021). These developments are often described as populist: In contradistinction to blunt authoritarianism or fascist ideology, right-wing populism—at first sight—draws intensely on a democratic discourse by aspiring to mobilise popular sovereignty against the ‘established power structure’ (Canovan 1999: 3). When it comes to the question of how to grapple with these tendencies, we witness two strands of reaction: The first emphasises the risks that come along with the populist invocation of the people K. Möller (B) Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7_10

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(Müller 2016; Urbinati 2014). Accordingly, the challenge involves the defence of liberal democracy not only against nationalist, but also all holistic conceptions of peoplehood that rely on the totalising gesture of embodying the people as a whole within public deliberation. The second strand takes another route: It aspires to ‘lever out’ the rise of nationalism by trying to represent the ‘people below’ against the ‘elite above’ from a democratic-inclusive standpoint (Howse 2019; Vergara 2020). Progressive varieties of populism should give dissatisfaction, lack of self-efficacy, protest against democratic deficits, and broader social crisis tendencies an adequate expression instead of reifying a closed national people pitted against the ‘others’. Against this background, the questions that resurface concern whether a transnational populism, whose constituency moves beyond the national people, is already observable and if it qualifies as a timely political strategy (Henderson 2020; De Cleen et al. 2019). In the following, this contribution examines transnational populism’s potentials and limitations. It argues that it should not be conceived of as a free-standing type of discursive entrepreneurship, but rather a dynamic which already operates from within the co-evolution of the political system and its constitutionalisation in international contexts, such as the United Nations or the European Union. The argument is structured as follows: The first part elucidates how populist politics are connected to the political system and its inter- and transnational layers (10.2). Using these insights, it is possible to draw distinctions between different variants of transnationalisation (10.3). Then, the contribution reconstructs two paradigmatic cases: The first case is the strive of the non-aligned alliance of developing countries from the global south for a New International Economic Order in the UN of the 1960s and 1970s (10.4). The second case is the rise of anti-austerity populism as a reaction to the Euro-Crisis in the EU in the 2010s (10.5). As it is demonstrated, transnational populisms remain entangled in a basic antinomy: On the one hand, it is possible to address crucial social divisions by invoking a transnational people. On the other hand, the political system in the international sphere is—up until now—constitutionalised in a way that privileges nationalist invocations and, thereby,

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makes it difficult to pursue transnational politics. However, this antinomy may not necessarily be a sign of weakness. To the contrary, it can also be seen as a characteristic strength: Transnational populisms reveal the symptomatic truth that inter- and transnational constitutionalisation has to be re-oriented in times of global challenges, such as climate change, migration movements, and growing interdependencies.

10.2 Populism and Popular Sovereignty In order to clarify the potentials and limitations of transnational populism, it is necessary to explore its basic structure. In the research literature, the term populism is used to capture a specific type of politics that revolves around the claim to incarnate the people’s will and oppose it against the elites. There is an ongoing debate about whether populism is situated on an ideational level (relying on a specific thin ideology), is a strategic rhetoric, or even expresses the logic of the political as such.1 However, in all of these approaches the distinction between ‘people’ and ‘power-bloc’ remains the defining feature. Looking at the history of populist movements, we encounter a rather pluralised landscape where different movements, politicians, or parties have casted their people from a variety of angles—be it a rural people which opposes the dominance of big cities’ finance, as was the case in US populism of the 1890s; the working people which has always been the starting point of labour populism; a liberal rights-based people of individual entrepreneurs that encourages (neo-) liberal varieties of populism; or a notion of homogenous peoplehood in the case of authoritarian populism.2 By taking this perspective further, it becomes possible to step beyond the nation-state and conceive of populism in the inter- and transnational sphere (Moffitt 2017; De Cleen et al. 2019). Until now, the research on populism beyond the nation-state has introduced a distinction between international and transnational populism. International populism can be observed when agents coordinate their actions and raise common 1 2

For an overview, see Kaltwasser et al. (2017). For studies on the history of populism, see Rosanvallon (2020), Möller (2020).

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political claims in the international sphere by pitting the sovereignty of their respective national peoples against the elites (De Cleen 2017: 355).3 In contrast, transnational populism is defined by a transgressive movement which overcomes the reliance on a national people. It appeals to a ‘transnational people-as-underdog as a political subject that supersedes the boundaries of the nation-state, rather than merely linking up national people-as-underdogs’ (ibidem). Possible examples mostly stem from social movement activities which criticise international institutions as elite-driven, such as the alter-globalization movement, Occupy movement, or the recent ‘Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM25)’ initiative in the context of the EU (De Cleen et al. 2019; De Cleen 2017: 355). However, the focus on populism as a discourse or ideology which is deliberately picked up by agents exhibits explanatory problems. A sound approach would not only have to observe free-standing discourses, but also provide a framework which makes it possible to clarify the conditions for the appearance, success, and/or decay of populism. Research on populism often resurrects an imagined scenario where politics mainly revolves around a free-standing battle of constructions rather than given opportunity structures of the already existing political system. In the following, a slightly different route will be taken: The role and function of populism will be elucidated as a form of politics which inherently creeps within constitutional contexts on the national as well as inter- and transnational level. The inherited notion of politics as it is constitutionalised in the nation-state can serve as a starting point for such a systemic perspective: Here, politics revolves around the differentiation between a political system and its capacity to take collectively binding decisions which claim to constitute and bind society as a whole (Luhmann 2002: 84; Marx 1972: 354). In his writings on the political system, the German 3 A recent example is contemporary right-wing populism. Populist governments are in the course of building alliances in order to restore national sovereignty. Admittedly, there is talk in this political scene about clashing civilisations or ethno-pluralistic conceptions of peoplehood, but ultimately their strategy assumes the primacy of given national or cultural identities which can and should not be transgressed (see, e.g., for right-wing populism in eastern Europe: Kim [2020]; for a general perspective on identity-issues: Kempf [2020]). This is why right-wing populism stands in contradiction to self-transformative and, in the case of this contribution, transnational varieties of populism.

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systems theorist Niklas Luhmann expanded this wide-spread view. He argued that the advent of democracy transformed the scene. By acknowledging legitimate opposition, the ‘top’ of the political system is ‘split’ (Luhmann 1987: 132) and the government is confronted with an opposition which can replace the governing elite. Hence, the political system is characterised by a communicative self-reference where the binary coding—power-superiority/power-inferiority—is reframed as government/opposition (Luhmann 2002: 97). In order to connect to the political system, one has to reach beyond aims, values, or programmes. At least from a certain point on, one has to engage with legislation and the destitution of or the strive for public office in the system’s centre. But it is important to note that the political system does not operate in complete isolation from other systems. In order to stabilise its own selfreference and allow the interplay of government and opposition to be processed, it has historically carried out a privileged relation to law. The legal system provides the necessary underpinning for enduring procedures. This is acknowledged in an overarching constitutionalism which can be defined as a ‘structural coupling’ between both systems that ‘reacts to the differentiation of law and politics and their need for mutual connection’ (Luhmann 1990: 180; see also Luhmann 2004: 381 ff.). The constitution sets the scene for the relative autonomy of both systems by distinguishing between the circuits of political power and a legal system which constitutes and, at the same time, binds political procedures. However, the available avenues within the political system reach beyond the interplay of government and opposition. This is due to the fact that modern constitutionalism is characterised by a higherranking second-order dimension. It revolves around the question of how simple first-order procedures are constituted. Simple communications are observed, confirmed, and revised by reference to the higher-ranking code ‘constitutional/unconstitutional’ (Luhmann 2004: 407). Then, whether simple first-order procedures adequately express the constitutional essentials is reflected on and discussed. In this context, a specific type of politics enters the stage—one which addresses not only the relation of government and opposition, but also the foundational dimension of the polity: In such second-order politics, the question is not whether or not a legislative act, a specific policy proposal, or a public official

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should be supported, rather it functions to revise the whole order (e.g., how power is distributed, how procedures are constituted, how officials are operating, etc.) and asks if it is still in line with the constitutional commitments. Most importantly, such constitutional politics becomes a vital option in cases where democratic popular sovereignty amounts to a foundational norm: Can the existing order as it has evolved still claim to be connected to the people as constituent power? This opens up the field for originalist, societal, liberal, conservative, juridical, etc. approaches to conceive of the people as well as for fierce battles about its meaning and purpose.4 In the light of these insights, it becomes possible to more precisely locate populism: It is a mechanism of contestation which activates popular sovereignty from below and pits it against the established structure of power. But it is important to note that it does so in a distinct way, namely, through ‘re-entry’5 : Popular sovereignty as a second-order dimension re-enters the regular first-order circuits of political communication. Thus, populism blurs the line between regular and constitutional politics by re-inserting the claim to embody the people against the elites within the regular procedures of the political system. It not only challenges the periphery of the political system (public opinion formation) or the constitutional self-understanding, but it also affects its centre (legislation and public offices). Thereby, it presents itself as an effective option for making societal protest a clearly political matter which threatens the existing officials of disempowerment or replacement by new representatives. This characteristic re-entry distinguishes populism from other political options, such as regular oppositional politics (which operates on the policy level and aspires to constructively change legislation), social movement politics (which aspires to influence the periphery of public opinion formation), and pure constitutional politics (which is confined to extraordinary second-order politics and does not engage in power struggles or the strive for office). Admittedly, populist movements are often connected to social movements. In some cases, social movements 4 For an investigation into such constitutional politics in the case of the US: Ackerman (1989). See also populist approaches to constitutionalism which oppose juridical expertocracy: Tushnet (2000: 177 ff.). 5 For the general role of re-entries in social systems, see Luhmann (1993).

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set the scene for populist forms of politics; in other cases, they evolve in the shadow of populism (Grattan 2016). Not least, populist personalities often present themselves as being part of broader movements which transcend the confines of the existing political parties. But what makes them populist is their reliance on the structure of the political system with a view to embodying popular sovereignty within parliamentary and/or presidential representation. In sum, populism stands in a certain contradiction. It is an avenue of political contestation which aims at dissolving power-concentration and elite-dominance. However, it is also vulnerable to reificatory tendencies. In these cases, the distinction between the people and the elite undergoes a peculiar twist. Here, the notion of the ‘people’ no longer reacts to elite-dominance, rather it is stylised as an identity-based entity whose supremacy is in constant danger of being diluted by the ‘others’ and, more importantly, by even more vulnerable social groups ‘from below’.

10.3 Inter- and Transnational Contexts It is important to note that popular sovereignty as a foundational constitutional norm has always been situated within international constitutionalisation. As insights into the evolution of international law demonstrate, the world-wide spread of democratic popular sovereignty after the Second World War was not just a matter of distinct national developments and popular social change on the nation-state level (Anghie 2005: 196 ff.; Brunkhorst 2014: 422 ff.; Fisch 2012); the reinvigoration of international law in the framework of the UN in 1945 contributed immensely to this spread. By acknowledging public authorities on a given territory as representing a national people within clearly demarcated borders and accepting their order as ‘state’, the international sphere took part in the constitution of national sovereignty. The UN Charter enshrined ‘the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples’ (UN-Charter Art.1 (2)), ‘the principle of sovereign equality of all its members’ (Art.2 (1)), the protection of ‘territorial integrity’, and ‘political independence’ (Art. 2 (4)). In sum, it provided a normative grammar of self-determination which permeated national constitution-making.

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As Chris Thornhill has argued in his investigations into the history of constitutionalism, one has to depart from a co-evolution of international law and national-statehood. The ‘globalization of democracy’ was heavily driven by the advent of international law: (…) in many cases of democratic polity building after 1945, national populations only became sovereign citizens in their own societies as a result of externally imposed norms, and on the foundation of external constructions of legitimate sovereign power. The achievement of democratic sovereignty, classically conceived as the free act of the collective body of national citizens, was widely realized as the consequence of international normative directives and expectations. (Thornhill 2018: 167)

In particular, decolonialisation played a key role in polity making: National liberation movements succeeded in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and constituted new nation-states. Drawing on the right to self-determination, they were included in an international community which—at least formally—acknowledged their sovereignty (Anghie 2005: 197). However, the UN did not replicate crucial distinctions between government and opposition as can be identified on the national level. Instead, it was oriented towards consensus-procedures (Ley 2015a: 38 ff.). The UN General Assembly was not designed as a transnational legislation in which government and opposition collide; it was designed to create a forum for inter-state dialogue and the furthering of common objectives. As scholarly discussions on the emerging ‘world power system’ emphasise (Albert 2016), this international community opened up a peculiar context where the characteristic power-code could be processed. More specifically, the international order conceived of itself as both the result of state-consent and as polity. Therefore, politicisation has always oscillated between two poles (Koskenniemi 2005): On the one hand, the international community reflected itself as emanating from a partly pre-legal state sovereignty. On the other hand, one could always make sense of this sovereignty from an overarching juridical and rights-based standpoint. From this perspective, the status of being a sovereign state

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depended upon the adherence to the higher-ranking laws of the international community (ibidem: 224 ff.). Thus, the acknowledgement of the state as sovereign entity could only occur under international law. These paradoxical foundations always pre-formed the available options when it came to contentious politics: Either politicisation referred to the sovereign leeway for states (here, the right of nation-states to pursue their own pathways is highlighted) or the primacy of international law to binds its parts was invoked. In the latter case, political claims were framed as expressing shared transnational principles. Thus, politics within the international community has consistently been characterised by an oscillation between ‘ascending’ claims to state sovereignty and ‘descending’ doctrines which stressed the primacy of the international community (ibidem: 225). Now, if this is a formative aspect of the systemic context, one has to depart from the following assumption (which may seem, at first sight, counter-intuitive): Though the UN lacks the symbolic inventory of national public spheres, populist re-entries may not be confined to the national political system. The basic structure of the UN even triggers a type of contestation where agents invoke the principle of self-determining popular sovereignty and oppose it to the elites (be it powerful nation-states or international functionaries, etc.). In the absence of regular legislation and the existence of only weak scopes for non-foundational opposition-politics (Ley 2015b), national governments tend to begin with the right to self-determination and sovereign state equality. This can lead to huge imbalances: Transnational societal contradictions and substantive challenges are likely to collapse into a power-play between distinct national peoples. Admittedly, this statecentred setting has come under pressure in the last decades. Transnational activism and the politicisation of global governance regimes can be observed and are often portrayed as disseminating new forms of the political (Teubner 2018; Horst 2013; Fischer-Lescano 2012). However, for the purpose of determining the role of transnational populism, it remains crucial to identify re-entries where the claim to ‘we, the people’ against the elite serves as the starting point for engaging with the existing avenues of the political system.

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Inter- and transnational forms of distinct parliamentary representation may constitute another explicit context for such re-entries. The EU is often portrayed as a form of supra-national constitutionalism which partly de-couples the notion of the people from the nation-state (Fossum and Menéndez 2011). From the 1970s, the institutional setup started to expand beyond the judicial sphere and intergovernmental decision-making through the European Parliament. The mixed character of the EU—which combines inter-state bargaining in the Council (representing the peoples of Europe), parliamentary deliberation in the European Parliament (potentially representing the European people), and the strong role of the European Commission—has provoked recurring controversies about its status as a political system sui generis, a federative super-state, or a still intergovernmental institution. However, the advent of the European Parliament has always been considered as constituting a distinct transnational sphere of politics (Patberg 2014). In the framework of the European Parliament, it should become possible to pursue regular oppositional politics within the confines of the legislative procedure (Art. 294 TFEU). From that perspective, the European Treaties can be reconstructed as replicating the two-level structure of constitutionalism. But the European Parliament is characterised by explicit non-popular concomitants; it takes part in controlling and shaping legislation, but its working structure is highly complex and dissolves into ‘deformalized’ politics under the auspices of trialogue-negotiations between Council, Commission, and Parliament (Achenbach 2016: 27). Clear mechanisms which reduce complexity with a view to staging political conflict and processing the binary power-code are still weak. The parliament takes part in the appointment of public offices, but at the same time the latter do not yet assume the necessary symbolic power which is needed in order to establish an interplay of government and opposition. Admittedly, the European Parliament and the EU have regulations concerning the role of political parties and parliamentary groups. However, meaningful mass partisanship which stands in privileged relation to the parliamentary scene has not yet developed and remains episodic (White 2014). This is also reflected in the European elections which are still tied to the national level, the respective national public spheres, and the national parties which determine the lists. In sum, the European Parliament assumes an

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undetermined status. It arouses the expectation of a popular legislation which is, in return, undermined by its procedural framework and lack of symbolic power. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that, over the last decades, one can observe not so much the spread of transnationalEuropeanised populisms, but rather a growing scene of national-populist currents which exploit the European Parliament’s status (Mudde 2007). They take part in the parliamentary processes, but at the same time they either stage themselves as victims of an all too mighty European superstate (in need of curtailment) or they emphasise that the parliament has no power because of its un-rootedness in respective national cultures. Thereby, populist currents are able to scandalise the non-popular bias by resorting to national sovereignty. In comparison, the national layer seems to symbolise political power and to provide the capacity for taking effective decisions ‘in the name of the people’. In sum, it turns out that in both contexts—that of the UN and the EU—the political system is configured in a way that allows for and even triggers populist re-entries. While the transnational setting often lacks resonance in the public sphere as well as the role of mass partisanship, it seems debatable whether it is ‘far more diffuse, open and unfamiliar, making the constitutive process of speaking for “the people” more difficult’ (Moffitt 2017: 8). Drawing on the re-entry approach, the opposite could in fact be the case: Although lacking the symbolic inventory, the systemic contexts in the inter- and transnational sphere even tend to privilege populist contestation. However, it would be misleading to overlook that populism in the respective contexts is not unilaterally doomed to stage a reified national people. The following sections exemplify that dynamics of transnational peoplehood can be discerned. 1. Rooted transnational populism: As insights into the history of populism demonstrate, there have always been variants of inclusive populisms. These aimed at representing all those who are dominated by the power-bloc. Possible examples stem from nineteenth-century labour and peasant populism (Calhoun 1982), popular mass politics of the 1920s and 30s which paved the way for Roosevelt’s New Deal (Kazin 1995), and left-populism in Latin America (Linera 2014). In these cases, the invocation of popular sovereignty does not necessarily collapse into a nationalist reification of the people. Rather, it is observable that such

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populisms reflect on their constituency and are, in principle, open to shifting their boundaries. The transnational dynamic resides on the level of reflexivity, namely, how these movements determine the power-bloc and how they reflect on the boundaries of their respective people. Inclusive populisms can be reconstructed as transgressing the boundaries of the national constituency when they remain open to outsiders’ perspectives. This is the case when they consider those who are not yet included and are situated beyond national borders as essential parts of their ‘people’. Thereby, they anticipate a transnational people from within the national political scene. Such trajectories can be reconstructed as rooted transnational populism. As shown in the third part of this contribution, we can find examples in the contemporary political landscape of the EU. 2. Transformative international populism: Recent research literature on populism investigates whether populist movements enter international coordination (De Cleen 2017: 355). Given the centrality of sovereign state equality in the international sphere, governments regularly appeal to democratic self-determination. Thus, it is not surprising that the international coordination of such resistances can be observed: Governments coordinate their actions and invoke the sovereignty of their particular national people. Hence, it seems necessary to distinguish such international populisms from a transformative variety of international populism. In transformative international populisms governments coordinate their activities and invoke popular sovereignty as well, but they do it in a different way: They stick to a ‘plebian’ standpoint (Vergara 2020), i.e., they react to given power-blocs and elite dominance. Thereby, they leave notions of peoplehood open to transformation. They cast their constituency in border-transgressing terms when they appeal to the people as ‘global masses’, the ‘global south’, the ‘developing world’, etc. Further, they coordinate their activities with a view to the establishment of new inter- and transnational orders which differ from unilateral renationalisation. Here again, a transnational dynamic may step in which revises reified variants of the people/power-bloc distinction. An exemplary case that is discussed in the next section is the surge of developing countries and their strive for a New International Economic Order in the UN of the 1960s and 70s.

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3. Full-blown transnational populism: The option of a full-blown transnational populism also remains. It appeals from the outset to a transnational people and operates chiefly beyond the nation-state. Not least, one can observe recurring social movements which claim to represent non-national constituencies. In recent years, transnational protest has emerged (Volk 2018). In cases such as the movement against climate change, the world social forum, the alter-globalization movement, or solidarity with migrants and refugees the role of the people is de-coupled from national peoplehood. However, it is a characteristic feature of these movements that they raise holistic claims of representation and pit these against the national governments, transnational corporations, or interand transnational institutions. Yet there is a crucial difference between these movements and populism since they do not perform the necessary re-entry into the political system or strive for immediate changes in legislation and public offices. In transnational protest movements, we can discern a variety of strategies: Some aim at influencing the ‘sluices of administrative power’ (Habermas) from the standpoint of civil society, others aim at building a counter-society at a distance from existing institutions, still others confront the power-bloc through civil disobedience or symbolic attacks. Thus, transnational protest movements only turn into populism if they engage with legislation, the existing institutionalised political decision-making, and public offices. Hence, full-blown transnational populism may have a precarious status because it has to grapple with the re-entry into the circuits of the political system. In the following, such transnational dynamics is scrutinised within the contexts of the UN and the EU: The strive of the ‘developing world’ for a new economic international order is reconstructed as transformative international populism (10.4). In the context of the EU, the anti-austerity populism, which reacted to the Euro-Crisis in the 2010s, exhibited a mixture of rooted and full-blown transnational populism (10.5).

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10.4 Transformative International Populism: The Quest for a New International Economic Order It is often overlooked that the foundation of the UN was also entangled in the process of decolonialisation (Anghie 2005: 197 ff.). Former colonial powers were forced to give up their territories and, in return, nation state formation evolved in Asia, Latin-America, and Africa. This change was driven by national liberation movements which aimed at self-determination. In many cases, they stood at a distance from both western capitalism and real existing socialism. Though pursuing different national pathways, these countries engaged in international coordination with a view to effectuate changes in world politics, most notably against the strive of the powerful nations to exert dominance through foreign military interventions, economic exploitation, and neo-colonial dependencies (Bockman 2015). The so-called ‘non-aligned countries’ established the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 and organised themselves as the ‘Group of 77’. The significant power potential resided in its name. Through the mere number of its members, the group was able to constitute a majority in the UN’s General Assembly. Finally, it established the resolution of a New Economic International Order (NIEO) in 1974 which was to dissolve the dominance of former colonial powers and establish more sustainable pathways of economic development (UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, Res. 3201, 1974). This emerging counter-power alarmed conservatives and (neo-) liberals all over the world. The industrialised north still profited from the dependency of the third world and experienced fierce internal cultural battles about its colonial history. Further, economic globalisation was underway and financial flows, foreign investment, and transnational companies discovered new schemes of expansion. An organic intellectual of the international free trade system warned: ‘The catalogue of developmentpolitical demands as i.a. formulated in the Charter of Algier (1967) and the action program of Lima (1971) by the trade-union-like organized Group of 77 leads to a revolutionary overall revision of traditional

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international economic law from the viewpoint of development policies’ (Petersmann 1976: 496). If we take a closer look at the trajectory of the non-aligned bloc, we can identify a re-entry structure: While the General Assembly lacked a legislative function, it was used for claims to popular sovereignty. The Group of 77 reflected itself as representing a broader constituency of the world’s masses and underdogs against the former colonial powers. The NIEO resolution stated: ‘The developing countries which constitute 70 per cent of the world’s population, account only for 30 per cent of the world’s income. It has proved impossible to achieve an even balanced development of the international community under the existing international economic order’ (UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order). The main division resided in the contradiction between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing countries’. Further, the declaration raised a holistic claim to restructure the international community as a whole. An influential figure of the non-aligned bloc, the international lawyer Mohammed Bedjaoui, saw the movement as the forerunner of the world community because it proposed ‘new world-wide legal, economic and political order, based on the integrated development of the whole earth and on the right to progress of all peoples’ (Bedjaoui 1979: 13; see also Özsu 2015: 131). The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States echoed these ambitions (UN Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, General Assembly Resolution 3281: 1974). Thus, ‘joint consideration of and concerted action regarding international economic problems’ was called for in order to take steps in the direction of a ‘just and rational development of all parts of the world’ (UN-Charter of Economic Rights, Preamble). The charter envisaged an international order which combined transnational cooperation with the scope for developing countries to decide on their economic policies. This project had already resonated in the speech of the Chilean President Salvador Allende before the UNCTAD in 1972. Here, Allende began with the observation that ‘our community is not homogeneous, but divided up into peoples that have grown rich and peoples that have remained poor’ (Allende 1973: 349). He emphasised the ‘emergence of specific possibilities for constructing new international trade patterns’ (ibidem: 352) and ‘self-respecting international relations’ (ibidem: 356).

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In his speech, he also referred to ‘us, the peoples of the third world’ (ibidem: 349) and accused the ‘affluent countries’ of pursuing their selfish interests with ‘bulldog tenacity’ (ibidem: 350). However, this transnational project, which revolved around the distinction between a selfish power-bloc and the developing world, was operating under the central role of national sovereignty. The NIEO declaration invoked the ‘sovereign equality of states’ (UN Declaration, para 4a), rejected foreign interventions into national self-determination, and assured sovereignty over national resources. More importantly, it stated that every country should have ‘the sovereign and inalienable right to choose its economic system as well as its political, social and cultural systems in accordance with the will of the people, without outside interference, coercion or threat in any form whatsoever’ (UN Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, Chapter II, Art. 1). This emphasis on self-determination was an important weapon since it mobilised constituent principles of international law. Further, it reacted to the growing threats from first-world countries, such as the toppling of national governments by foreign military intervention and new forms of economic dependency (Pahuja 2019). One can qualify the contestation of the non-aligned bloc in terms of a transformative international populism: On the one hand, it referred to a transnational constituency and aimed to dissolve the power-bloc of developed countries. It did not envisage a unilateral re-nationalisation, but rather new types of international socialisation. On the other hand, it drew heavily on the defence of national sovereignty against foreign interventions. In this case, sovereignty ‘articulated the hope of experiencing the thrill of having one’s life in one’s own hands. This is what sovereignty meant for those who struggled against theocratic rule in early modern Europe or invoked it to fight decolonization in the twentieth century’ (Koskenniemi 2011: 70). Subsequently, the non-aligned movement triggered reactions which were ultimately successful: A neoliberal counter-reaction was able to undermine these tendencies (Slobodian 2018: 263 ff.). It made use of military force in order to block democratic socialism in Chile, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, for example. Further, it set in motion populist types of political mobilisation, such as what Margaret Thatcher and

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Ronald Reagan did. Most importantly, it instigated a type of constitutionalisation which was, from the outset, meant to block democratic socialism: Inter- and transnational institutions should constitutionalise neoliberal economic policies and property relations on a higher-ranking level in order to make them unavailable to alternative economic policies (Gill and Cutler 2014; Möller 2018). In this context, the re-entry of non-liberal concerns was blocked and could be ruled out as unconstitutional from the outset. Until the financial crisis of 2008, this counter-movement proved successful and established an international economic order under the auspices of neo-liberalism. But it remained precarious and set in motion vast disintegrating dynamics. It was recurrently haunted by crisis and is, nowadays, being challenged by populist contestation.

10.5 Anti-Austerity Populism in the European Union What about populism in contexts where separate layers of transnational parliamentary representation already exist? European integration is the prime case for a constitutionalisation which displays clear signs of a distinct polity. One has to acknowledge that the aspirations for transnational populism in Europe are a relatively new tendency. There have always been conceptions of Pan-Europeanism: Moderate conservatives engaged in cross-border dialogue in order to establish the European Treaties and exhibited a ‘transnational’ mindset (Wolkenstein 2020), communist parties engaged in ‘Eurocommunist’ strategies in the 1970s (Heurtebize 2014), social movements in the late 1990s and 2000s gathered in European Social Forums and, more recently, the ‘Pulse of Europe’ movement highlighted pro-EU attitudes. But in all of these cases, the transnational people was not part of a populist strategy: Either it was not seen as ‘plebian’ people reacting to the dominance of elites and powerblows within the EU or it did not perform the re-entry into the realm of political decision-making by being confined to the civil societal sphere. More specific transnational patterns did not play a role until the political conflicts around the Euro-Crisis after 2010, where a distinct

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anti-austerity populism was on the rise. New left parties, such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, emerged. Social democratic parties, such as Labour in the UK, abandoned their attachment to third way approaches and former socialist parties engaged with populist approaches and transformed their political function (Stavrakakis 2014; Agustín and Briziarelli 2017). This development reacted to the crisis of financial capitalism and its emphasis on rigorous austerity. While Germany managed the global financial crisis after 2008 through anti-cyclical investment programmes, it resisted transferring this Keynesian turn to the EuroZone (Tooze 2018: 319 ff.). Instead, it insisted on austerity policies and the non-socialisation of debts on the European level (Brunkhorst 2020). The Euro-Crisis would have been a crucial opportunity to re-orient the EU and the Euro-Zone with a view to economic cohesion. However, the reaction pattern was different, even reinforcing austerity and interstate competition. A separate fiscal compact, which partly circumvented the existing procedures of European law, established a regulatory regime which was meant to supervise and put pressure on southern European countries to reduce their state deficit (Fischer-Lescano 2014). In order to contest these tendencies, a distinct anti-austerity populism became successful in the following situations: In Greece, Syriza had a major impact. In Spain, the newly founded party Podemos was growing and in Portugal left forces were on the rise. The characteristic trait of this political surge was the fact that it relied on a populist mode of mobilisation: It campaigned against the austerity power-bloc and the Troika (an institutional alliance composed of the IMF, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank [ECB] which should supervise the effective realisation of austerity policies). In this case, the people was casted not in nativistic or ethnic terms but in inclusionary and plural terms: Podemos referred to a plural notion of la gente as popular subject which included migrants, local regional identities, and outsiders’ perspectives (Iglesias 2015, 185; Errejon and Mouffe 2015). Syriza defined its constituency as ‘plural, inclusive and active subject unbound by ethnic, racial, sexual, gender or other restrictions’ (Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014: 135). Further, the anti-austerity surge did not primarily appeal to the restoration of national sovereignty, but also envisaged shared crisis policies on the European level (Varoufakis 2017: 78 ff.).

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After entering the circuits of the political system, these movements aimed at overtaking governmental power in the member states and using the European Council and the Euro-Zone meetings as forums of contestation. Given the non-simultaneity of timing and majority-building on the nation-state level, it was only in Greece that Syriza entered the government in 2015. At the outset, the Prime minister Alexis Tsipras was careful not to resort to national populism. In a speech at the Parliamentary group of Syriza on 17 February 2015, he claimed to defend the European Treaties against the ‘power-bloc’ of conservative governments. Tsipras accused the Troika of breaching European Treaties whose ‘fundamental elements are common values of democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty’.6 Tsipras stated that, ‘to us, the European Treaties are binding’ and not ‘the obsessions of conservative governments in the EURO zone’ (ibidem). In a similar vein, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis underlined Syriza’s ‘pro-European’ stance and aimed at proposing a ‘new programme’ of ‘debt-restructuring’ on the European level (Varoufakis 2017: 77). It was not surprising that, ultimately, Greece refused to leave the Euro-Zone and instead accepted the so-called ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. This was not only a matter of economic feasibility, but it was also caused by the fact that Syriza’s approach to Europe was not a sovereigntist variety of national populism. It favoured a more cohesive crisis politics: ‘Our government will proceed under the maximum cooperation with the well-constituted legal institutions of the European Union (…). But with a tripartite committee (…) whose logic we consider anti-European (…), we have no intention to cooperate’ (Varoufakis 2017: 170). However, the national bias struck back. The conflict was suddenly reframed as a power conflict between the self-interest of competing national governments and their peoples (Offe 2016). In the public sphere the Euro-Crisis was debated as the Greece-Crisis. In the absence of Europeanised possibilities to further the conflict, Syriza had to resort to a national referendum in 2015. Accordingly, the reference to national sovereignty acquired a more prominent stance. The 6

See his speech, https://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/rede-des-ministerpraesidenten-griechenl ands-alexis-tsipras-vor-der-syriza-fraktion-im-griechischen-parlament-am-17-02-2015 (last access: 26/05/2021).

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Greek government stood alone and could not ally itself with progressive governments as they evolved later in Portugal and Spain, while potential anti-austerity majorities, such as in Germany, did not materialise. Syriza’s trajectory had huge repercussions on the scene of socialist, social-democratic, and progressive parties in Europe, as well as on transnational social movements (Katsambekis and Kioupkiolis 2019). While an enduring transformative international populism did not enter the scene, rooted and full-blown transnational dynamics can be discerned in the aftermath. Two cases serve to illustrate this tendency: The development of the left party Die Linke in Germany can be considered an explicit case of rooted transnational populism (1), while the movement Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM 25), which emerged from struggles around the Euro-crisis, exhibited a variety of full-blown transnational populism (2). 1. The turn to a rooted transnational populism can be reconstructed in the case of the German party Die Linke. In the 2010s, explicit battles and decisions around transnational populism took place. As an established part of the German political system, Die Linke emerged from the former party of democratic socialism in 2007 and played the role of a left-leaning party whose ‘central purpose has been to challenge austerity based-measures’ (Campbell 2018: 157). By following the experiences of anti-austerity populism in other countries, the party leadership, which was elected in 2012, pursued a strategic aggiornamento and instigated ‘processes of Party modernization’ (ibidem). While the party has always had a positive approach to European integration, the leadership nevertheless reinforced cross-national coordination. It opposed established strong ties with Syriza, Podemos, and the Labour Party. In a longer manifesto titled ‘The Coming Democracy’, the party presidents, Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger, called for a more thorough engagement with a ‘new left populism’ which should explicitly transcend the ‘confines of nation-state mentality’ (Kleinstaaterei) and establish a popular coalition of ‘all those affected’ (Kipping and Riexinger 2015: 9).7 7 Cf. also the English translation of the manifesto ‘The Coming Democracy: Socialism 2.0. On the duties and opportunities of a party of the future in the Europe of

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This approach was not left undisputed. In 2013, two prominent party figures—former party-leader Oskar Lafontaine and member of Bundestag Sarah Wagenknecht—aimed at orienting the party programme towards re-nationalisation. They presented proposals for a more flexible construction of the EURO and pleaded in favour of exit strategies for its members (Hickel 2013). Further, they seemed to welcome the societal effect of such currency discussions, namely, to position the party in an ‘anti-EURO’-constituency which was at that time the raison d’être of the emerging right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland. However, Lafontaine and Wagenknecht failed to change the party programme at the decisive congress in Dresden in 2013. A second attack was launched in the aftermath of the ‘summer of welcome’ in 2015. The country was challenged by migration movements and large parts of society were engaged in the establishment of a ‘welcoming culture’ (Willkommenskultur ). Die Linke participated in this social movement by emphasising the right to asylum and taking a promigration stance. However, it demanded an inclusive ‘social offensive’ to strengthen public infrastructures in order to create win–win effects on the side of both migrants and local communities.8 In this context, Lafontaine and Wagenknecht accused the party of taking an idealistic position on migration. They bemoaned a neglect of social justice issues and a betrayal of what they considered the German working class. Finally, they designed the website Aufstehen in 2017 together with a couple of journalists and writers (Weisskircher 2018) as the starting point for a populist movement which was meant to replace the existing party structure. The overall aim of this attack was not so much situated on the policy level. Discussions about how to cope with migration movements were already under way. Influential party branches called for the establishment of an inclusionary ‘migration law’ which should ‘not wither tomorrow’ (http://linkewochezukunft.die-linke.de/2015/dokumentation/zukunft-der-linken/thecoming-democracy-socialism-20) (last access: 26/05/2021). 8 See the party congress’ resolution ‘More for all. A social offensive for an open country’ (https://archiv2017.die-linke.de/partei/organe/parteitage/magdeburger-parteitag-2016/beschl uesse-und-resolutionen/mehr-fuer-alle-eine-soziale-offensive-fuer-ein-offenes-land) (last access: 26/05/2021).

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away borders’, but ‘deprive them from their exclusionary effects and, in the long term, overcome them’.9 It would have been possible to connect to these proposals and argue for more restrictive approaches or protectionist policies. However, the Aufstehen circle circumvented all constructive discussions. It concentrated on media appearances and, thereby, aimed to shift the societal standpoint of the party towards rightwing discourses. It did so by rejecting their central tenets and adhering to their story: The circle bemoaned a ‘loss of control’ with regard to migration, talked of ‘Merkel’s invitation to come to Germany’ and used cultural insecurities as leverage.10 The website Aufstehen casted its enemy as ‘Merkel’s government’ and ‘arrayed behind (…) were a less typical crew for the left: an alliance of migrants (…) and the naïve leftists who loved them’ (Slobodian and Callison 2019: 44). Admittedly, Aufstehen tried to circumvent outspoken racism. However, ‘the consistent take was to recast migrants as either pawns in the game of financial capital or as phony poster children of misguided urban idealists’ (ibidem: 44). The conflict mainly revolved around the people: Should Die Linke consider only native Germans as its primary constituency? Or is Die Linke already part of an ‘Einwanderungsgesellschaft ’—a migration society—where the commitment to represent ‘people below’ makes it necessary to engage with migration backgrounds and their inclusion? Ultimately, Aufstehen failed and the party once more reinforced its stance at the party congress in Leipzig in 2018.11 In the case of Die Linke, one could speak of a conscious decision in favour of a rooted transnational populism which

9

See the conception for a refugee and migration law: https://www.die-linke.de/fileadmin/dow nload/debatte/einwanderungsgesetz/137i_Konzeption_LINKE_Fluechtlings_und_Einwanderung sgesetzgebung_neu.pdf (last access: 26/05/2021). Party Leader Katja Kipping rejected this conception and called for the establishment of ius solis, reminiscent of the French Jacobin constitution in 1793 in a speech at the German Institute of Economy (DIW): https://www. diw.de/de/diw_01.c.564740.de/bri_katjakipping_13092017.mp3.html (last access:26/05/2021). 10 A condensed version can be found in the book ‘Das Gespenst des Populismus’, where one passionate figure of Aufstehen, the theatre-maker Bernd Stegeman, outlines central ideas and bemoans that ‘Merkel sent a signal to the refugees to come to Germany’ and ‘abandoned the primacy of control’ among other statements (Stegemann 2017: 125). 11 See the motions: https://www.die-linke.de/partei/parteistruktur/parteitag/leipziger-parteitag2018/news-default-detailseite/gegen-rassismus-und-rechte-hetze-unsere-alternative-heisst-sozialegerechtigkeit/ (last access: 26/05/2021).

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combines the appeal to a transnational people with the rootedness in the national political system. However, in the aftermath of the Leipzig congress and the European Elections in 2019, the party faced serious problems by performing the re-entry into the political system. The central issues with regard to the EU in the public sphere have been climate change and the defence of European Integration against the rise of national populisms. These issues gave rise to a considerable switch by former left voters to Greens (Schlemermeyer 2019). However, in its electoral campaign, Die Linke stuck to central tenets of anti-austerity populism: It claimed that the EU needed a non-neoliberal ‘new start’ which combined social reforms, democratisation, and treaty changes.12 This ‘old-song’ was highly problematic: In the media, the long history of battles around migration and the EU were not reflected as, ultimately, reinforcing the transnational ambition, but casted Die Linke as an insecure candidate when it came to defending the existing achievements of European Integration. Further, Die Linke was not able to situate its anti-austerity agenda as a credible option within the quest for ecological change. While remaining relatively stable in the national polls between 8 and 10 per cent and having crucial success (11.3 per cent) that same day in the city state of Bremen (where it entered a coalition government) and in September in the federal state of Thuringa (31 per cent) in 2019, Die Linke only gained 5.5 per cent. The locomotive of history had toppled anti-austerity populism. 2. A second example for a transnational turn in anti-austerity populism is an initiative which resulted from the battle of the Syriza government. Journalists, writers, citizens, and, most prominently, the former Greek minister Yanis Varoufakis led the ‘DiEM 25’ movement. It started from the conclusion that it is necessary to fundamentally reform the EU in order to circumvent its decay. The driving force for this would be a European-wide movement to push for democratic procedures on the European Level, treaty changes, and new deal politics (Patberg 2020; De Cleen et al. 2019). In the founding manifesto, it was stated that ‘we have to regain control over our Europe from “unaccountable”

12

See https://en.die-linke.de/news/ep-election/election-programme/ (last access: 26/05/2021).

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technocrats, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions’.13 DiEM called for a ‘European Constituent Assembly’ and highlighted transnational forms of democratic disobedience. As pointed out in the research literature, it pursued a full-blown account to the European level by taking an ‘anti-nationalist’ and ‘populist-cum-democratic-constitutional approach’ (Blokker 2019: 347). In its manifesto, DiEM made use of the people/power-bloc distinction: For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy! They speak in democracy’s name but only to deny, exercise and suppress it in practice. They seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities. For rule by Europe’s peoples, government by the demos, is their nightmare.14

The background assumption was that a ‘transnational strategy for the democratisation of Europe is necessary because of the existence of a transnationally connected elite that negates the democratic rights of the people’ (De Cleen et al. 2019: 158). From the outset, it was clear that such a movement—at least from a certain point on—had to engage with the existing institutional setup in order to constitute a counterpower. Accordingly, it did not remain a civil society movement with some populist penchants but amounted to a real example of transnational populism by running for the 2019 European elections. However, the way that the European elections are organised undermined DiEM’s transnational aspirations; it had to determine different national lists in order to participate. This was a delicate issue: The organisation which was mainly led by scientists, journalists, and artists hit the hard ground of party landscapes. In many countries, social-democratic, green, and socialist parties which support claims of anti-austerity and new deal politics do exist. Clearly, the movement estimated that it was possible to attract voters through its full-blown programme. Hence, it entered into 13 See DiEM’s manifesto: https://diem25.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/diem25_english_l ong.pdf (last access: 26/05/2021). 14 Ibidem.

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national strategic party interaction from above. It could not count on an established network of constituencies and experienced party functionaries. Ultimately, the ambitious re-entry of DiEM 25 into national political systems failed. In Germany, its list acquired a voter turnout of 0.25 per cent. Paradoxically, the attempt to perform a populist re-entry undermined the movement’s credibility as a potentially popular agent. These cases reconstruct how anti-austerity populism in Europe has brought rooted as well as full-blown varieties to the fore. However, they also demonstrate how these attempts grappled with performing the reentry into the communicative circuits of the political system—either not being able to address the relevant societal divisions through the inherited pathways of anti-austerity populism (Die Linke) or having to re-enter the national political layer from above (DiEM 25).

10.6 The Future of Transnational Populism This contribution analysed the systemic contexts of populism in the inter- and transnational sphere. As it turns out, the political system is configured in a way that privileges populist types of contestation and is likely to reproduce a setting where governments invoke the popular sovereignty of their national people as a strategy of resistance. Notwithstanding this configuration, transnational dynamics can be identified in rooted, transformative, or full-blown varieties. Subsequently, this contribution exemplified these dynamics with regard to the UN and the EU. While the quest for a NIEO, as it was put forward by the ‘developing world’ in the UN, can be reconstructed as transformative international populism, the European anti-austerity populism which evolved as a reaction to the Euro-Crisis after 2010 exhibited a combination of rooted and full-blown characteristics. By scrutinising how these attempts had to deal with the typical populist re-entry, this contribution emphasised that popular sovereignty remains a contradictory device: On the one hand, it serves as the starting point for contestation and transformative demands. On the other hand, the state-centred setting is likely to undermine these aspirations. The initial problems are prone to being distorted into simple inter-state

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power struggles which privilege national populism. But, as argued in this contribution, the societal real-contradictions and economic interdependencies cannot be entirely repressed. They incite recurring transnational dynamics. The fact that their politicisation clashes with the state-centred grammar may not be a sign of transnational populism’s weakness, but— at least from a long-term perspective—its potential. It reveals the huge imbalance between the need for dissolution of power concentrations in order to cope with the apparent challenges of today’s world and the state of existing constitutionalisation. Against this backdrop, a transnational popular politics may be a complicated but almost inevitable course of action: By performing a re-entry, it could be possible to make these challenges a matter of collectively binding decision-making and effectuating societal transformations from within the political system. It could be that by ‘working around’ this antinomy such a politics can pave the way for more reliable pathways of transnational constitutionalisation. Sound politics, as Bertolt Brecht once noted, emanates from ‘the capacity to operate with antinomies’ (Brecht 1989: 578 f.).

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11 The Constitutional Deficit, Constituent Activism, and the (Conference on the) Future of Europe Paul Blokker

11.1 Introduction The future of Europe is in danger. Many argue that in the context of Brexit, strong illiberal countertendencies, and a range of other crises, regarding health, migration, and the economy—either the European Union (EU) is to be radically reformed or it will crumble. A sceptre haunts the EU, that is, the existential question of deepening and constitutionalizing its structures. It seems clear that almost two decades after the failed attempt to adopt a European political constitution in the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–2003), the idea of a European constitution is still highly visible as well as contested in the P. Blokker (B) Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czechia

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European, transnational arena. The failed Convention on the Future of Europe led to a ‘taboo-ization’ of the idea of a European Constitution in a formalistic sense, but clearly did not resolve complex constitutional questions with relation to the European integration process. What is more, the very failure of the Convention stimulated critical voices and mobilization (Fossum and Trenz 2006). The 2009 Lisbon Treaty replaced the European constitutional project but did not render the constitutional question obsolete. Hence, various actors have since the failure of the original constitution-drafting project called for a new constituent process, importantly emphasizing a series of constitutional deficits. One of the more recent calls is by the European Parliament, in the report ‘Possible evolutions of and adjustments to the current institutional set-up of the European Union’, in which it calls for a ‘constituent process’ in terms of ‘Treaty amendment’ and suggests a new ‘Convention’ (EP 2017: 18). Such calls become tangible in the light of institutional action, as with the current Conference on the Future of Europe, launched in 2021, which may potentially touch upon constitutional dimensions, not least when understood as relating to treaty change. The constitutionalization of European and transnational law is a welldeveloped field of scholarly research and debate, not least in an extensive, even if now somewhat subsided, debate on constitutional pluralism (see inter alia, Avbelj and Komarek 2012; Bellamy and Kröger 2021). Within these debates, there is, however, hardly any attention for the role of European civil society, civil society organizations (CSOs), and social movements in engaging with transnational constitutional developments. This is unfortunate, as ever since the Convention, and also recently, various transnational efforts engage with European constitutionalism, and do so in a critical, constructive, and imaginative fashion. The chapter has a dual objective. On one hand, it wants to contribute to the analysis of the role of transnational movements in European constitutional politics and in relation to the EU’s alleged democratic and constitutional deficits. The relation of transnational mobilization and activism to constituent power, constitution-making, and legal disobedience will be discussed. On the other, the aim is to provide a brief discussion and analysis of the political and constitutional claims, and

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resistance by (networks of ) social movements and civil society organizations in the EU (including the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), European Alternatives, and the recently formed Citizens Take Over Europe coalition),1 in particular focusing on articulated constitutional critique and the promotion of critical and alternative constitutional narratives and projects. The chapter seeks to analyze and clarify constitutional mobilization on the transnational level. It will build on literature on constitutional mobilization and will distinguish—following in part Peter Niesen (2019b)—between different constituent practices: constituent articulation, constituent activation, constituent action, and comprehensive constituent or radical constituting claims. Such distinctions help to diversify between forms of mobilization and a variety of claims, and to bring out the relative distance of transnational actors regarding formal institutions and processes (of amendment). Briefly, the chapter will first discuss the nature of the structural ‘constitutional deficit’ of the EU. Second, it discusses the role of organized European civil society, which played a prominent role in the original Convention on the Future of Europe, and has continued in recent years to mobilize for a bottom-up form of constitutional politics. Third, the chapter will elaborate the specific notion of ‘constitutional mobilization’, conceptualizing different dimensions of civil society involvement in democratic and constitutional politics, and relating such involvement to manifestations of constituent politics. Fourth, the distinctive forms of critique, alternative visions, and constitutional propositions of civil society actors will be discussed, in part drawing on interviews conducted in the context of the research project Transnational Populism and European Democracy (TRAPpED).2 Fifth, in the final part, the chapter

1 In order to clarify my own position as researcher of such movements, I follow Khasnabish and Haiven’s (2014) suggestion that the social researcher is part of the collective process of radical imagination that transnational movements engage in. In fact, I sympathize with and collaborate in particular with CTOE and DiEM25 in an attempt to co-cultivate ‘imaginary lanscapes’ regarding the European integration process (cf. Khasnabish and Haiven 2014: 13). 2 The research project Transnational populism and European democracy (TRAPpED) (Grantová ˇ agentura Ceské republiky, Standard Project 18-25924S) ran from 2018 until 2021 at Charles University in Prague. The project analyzed political and constitutional claims as well as forms

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briefly reflects on the experiences of constitutional politics in the EU with regard to the current Conference on the Future of Europe.

11.2 Constitutional Deficit The EU suffers not only from a general democratic deficit, but also from a more specific constitutional deficit (cf. the chapters by Holmes and Möller in this volume). Dario Castiglione has defined this deficit as ‘the way in which the political-administrative elite of the Union has systematically underplayed the constitution-making processes which have progressively transformed the European Community into a de facto polity, and the general lack of awareness and debate on constitutionmaking as a process intrinsic to the formation of a political community’ (Castiglione 1995, cited in Pogge 1997: 163). One could put this also in somewhat more sociological and socio-legal analytical terms as the gap between an already formed ‘material constitution’, on one hand, and an explicit political constitution, on the other, or the contrast between the legal and political functions of constitutions (Tuori 2007). The core of the problem is the absence of a legitimating dimension in the construction of a European material constitution. This legitimating dimension can only be provided by wider support—beyond narrow legal and political elite circles3 —in European society. As Tuori puts it clearly: ‘If there does not exist a receptive general constitutional culture, the constitution cannot contribute to the legitimacy of the polity’ (Tuori 2007: 46). The current constitutional constellation of the EU suffers from a number of hiatuses that contribute to a significant constitutional deficit:

of legal and constitutional mobilization by Transnational movements, in particular DiEM25 and European Alternatives. 3 The famous case of Les Verts [Case 294/83, Les Verts v. Parliament [1986] ECR 1339, para 23] in which the European Court of Justice proclaimed the existence of a European constitution charter may be sufficient as a marker in legal circles, in terms of constitutional and democratic politics it clearly bypasses any kind of political constituent process, as if the American, Italian, and other processes of adopting constitutions have been superfluous and irrelevant historical exercises of community-making. In this sense, the European constitutional charter is more reminiscent of Stalin’s 1936 Constitution than of any democratically adopted document.

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1. Original sin: the EU never had a real ‘constitutional moment’ (the Convention was only a tiny step towards such as moment, and it failed) and the constitutional structures that emerged are largely the outcome of judicial action (integration-through-law), foremost by the CJEU. In other words, the acclaimed constitutional moment did not materialize in the Convention on the Future of Europe, also because the larger public did not perceive it as such (cf. Tuori 2007: 38; Arato 2018). The Convention did, however, raise expectations with regard to the possibility of a political constitution. 2. Democratization: the current material structure can build on forms of normative legitimacy and (limited) forms of procedural legitimacy, but is not able to ground the norms and principles in a ‘civic constitutional culture’ (Tuori 2007: 46). As is currently acknowledged in the various declarations on the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), the EU is in significant need of enhanced citizen support and needs to systematically take into account citizens’ voices. Such support is not likely to materialize through a one-off form of citizen participation as in the CoFoE, but would need systematic inclusion in the Treaties, perhaps even including art. 48 on Treaty amendment, in order to make the functioning of the EU structurally based on citizen input. 3. Economy first: the material constitution that has been created performs a number of constitutional functions such as legal regulation, procedural dimensions of rule creation, basic rights, and the limiting function of law (Tuori 2007), but pertains in this largely to an ‘economic constitution’, which is one-sided and primarily focussed on market-making. A full-blown European Constitution would need social and political dimensions added to a currently unbalanced constitutional structure, the first to relate positively to European citizens’ lives and the second to grant legitimacy on the basis of some sort of popular will-formation to the European project. 4. Constitutionalism: the current constitutional order of the European Union does not provide genuine ‘constitutional’ limitations on the exercise of powers of amendment. In other words, the amendment rule of the TEU fails to allow for change on the basis of a

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broad consensus through (super-)majorities, but rather insists on the ratification by every single member state (cf. Arato 2018: 437–438).

11.3 Constitutional Mobilization or Constituent Activism The various dimensions of the democratic and constitutional deficits of the European Union have been, and continue to be, part of processes of politicization and political and constitutional mobilization. Constitutional mobilization—that is, forms of protest, claims-making and political and legal action regarding constituent and constitutional dimensions—is rarely discussed within the context of the EU. In a more general sense, I have discussed various dimensions of (domestic) constitutional mobilization elsewhere (Blokker 2020). While manifestations of constituent power are normally (and classically) related to domestic settings, in terms of a pouvoir constituant related to a distinct people, below I will discuss manifestations on the transnational level, related to the ‘constitution’ of a European polity (cf. Allegri 2003). Not only the domestic but also the transnational level displays forms of mobilization around constitutions (Anderson 2014; Blokker 2018; Teubner 2018). Attention to the interaction of transnational constitutional regimes (as in our case regarding the European Union) with a wider ‘audience’, addressees and affected outsiders is crucial for understanding the contested nature of constitutionalism beyond the nationstate, and it is relevant both for private and public arrangements. Civil society actors play a significant role in contesting, ‘testing’, and endorsing transnational constitutional arrangements, in this making the latter’s deficiencies and one-sidedness explicit and public, while at times engaging in the imagination and proposition of alternative and more comprehensive, political forms of constitutionalism. As Teubner argues, social movements, NGOs, and other collective actors may function as a ‘pouvoir irritant ’ for transnational legal regimes, contesting especially economic arrangements on the international level (Teubner 2018: S18). Nogc Son Bui has defined constitutional mobilization as the ‘process by which social actors employ constitutional norms and discourses to

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advocate for constitutional change’ (Bui 2018: 116). According to Bui, ‘[c]onstitutional mobilization is a global phenomenon which occurs in various institutional settings including well-established democracies, new democracies, and authoritarian regimes’ (Bui 2018: 119–120). As he rightly remarks, constitutional mobilization remains nevertheless ‘relatively understudied as a global phenomenon’ (Bui 2018: 120). Current analyses of legal and constitutional mobilization tend to focus on legal instruments (in particular litigation) and the consequences of societal action for incremental legal change and rights extensions. In this, current studies tend to consider different strategies of social movements in relative isolation from each other, to focus on relatively circumscribed issues, such as gender equality, social rights, or environmental rights, while failing to connect distinctive legal strategies in specific areas with wider forms of political participation, and with broader issues of a constitutional and constituent nature (such as that of radical, comprehensive constitutional change). Also in Bui’s account, which stresses constitutional mobilization as a process outside of courts, the main emphasis is ultimately on strategic action of societal actors in their interaction with political elites (Bui 2018). An understanding of ‘constitutionalization from below’ remains hence incomplete and we lack the means of assessing how constitutional mobilization affects wider political, legal, and constitutional culture. Elsewhere (Blokker 2020), I have suggested a more comprehensive approach that analyzes constitutional mobilization in a broader fashion. Central to this perspective are enduring conflict and struggle (beyond dispute resolution through courts, or political negotiation and dialogue) as well as normative, justificatory claims and conflicting interpretations of what constitutions are and what constitutionalism means (hence stressing systemic and constituent dimensions). In earlier work (Blokker 2020), I have proposed—in a preliminary fashion—that the constitutional politics and legal mobilization of social movements may be broken down in (a combination of ): (a) Litigation in courts. Individual and collective actors engage in judicial and/or administrative proceedings to pursue constitutionally relevant objectives; (b) Advocacy campaigns, lobbying, and engaging political institutions. The constitutional strategies of collective societal actors include

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the interaction and engagement with public institutions in order to promote political objectives. (c) Mobilization and claims-making . The making of political and constitutional claims may involve the organization of public gatherings (deliberative fora), public claims/protests (mobilization of constitutional norms), or the making of comprehensive constitutional claims in public debate, the organization of bottom-up, extra-institutional events, such as assemblies, as well as making claims on the basis of international arrangements/conventions or other constitutional contexts. The addressees of claims include institutions as well as the wider public; (d) Constitutional contestation and resistance. The (radical) public questioning of existing regimes or governments, or ongoing constitutional reform projects, with regard to their lack of a democratic-constitutional nature. Resistance involves the defence of a constitutional status quo ex ante (‘constitutionalism’ and the rule of law), and/or the articulation of constitutional alternatives. This is not an exhaustive list, and these different forms of action are frequently utilized in a parallel or sequenced manner. From a comparative perspective, it is clearly the case that some contexts (in particular, democratic regimes) will provide a more favourable ‘constitutional opportunity structure’ than others (backsliding or authoritarian regimes, but also regarding transnational processes and institutions), significantly shaping forms of constitutional mobilization and critique. While these practices, strategies, and claims are often studied in domestic contexts, they are equally relevant for the transnational sphere. The last two categories, those of constitutional mobilization, contestation, and resistance, clearly may involve constituent dimensions. Peter Niesen has recently suggested several similar distinctions between forms of constituent power, while discussing transnational forms of mobilization (Niesen 2019b), that is articulation (communicating), activation (reshaping constituent power), and exercising (bringing about fundamental change, 2019b: 41). Below I build on his distinction: – Constituent articulation. Attempts at influencing the process of European policy-making and constitution-making (such as in the cases of the Convention on the Future of Europe and the Conference on the Future of Europe) by making claims within the formal political process

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(as is currently the case with the newly founded civil society alliance Citizens Take Over Europe) and in some ways articulating constituent claims (e.g., by proposing new instruments, such as the European Citizens’ Initiative, as during the Convention, or a permanent citizens’ assembly, as in the context of the CoFoE). In Niesen’s words, ‘adopting a communicative role within a larger democratic process’ (Niesen 2019b: 41); – Constituent activation. The attempt at activating constituent power from below and trying to shape a constituent force from below (parallel to institutional claimants) by inviting and mobilizing citizens in taking part in citizens’ assemblies or producing statements on the basis of citizen mobilization (as in the case of European Alternatives which in 2013 produced a Citizens’ Manifesto on the basis of 60 citizens panels, held during a three-year time period, or its current Assemblies of Solidarity); – Original constituent action or exercise. Organizing forms of ‘civil disobedience’ or parallel processes, outside of formal institutional contexts, in the form of civil society mobilization (in a way, substituting for formal processes) or in a more populist, almost anti-establishment manner with the aim of bringing about change; – Comprehensive constituent claims or radical constituting claims. A further dimension should be added. While the constituent actions described above are generally focused on partial constituent exercises, by proposing limited changes or additions to the existing constitutional framework, a different approach calls for an entirely new European Constitution.4 Forms of constitutional mobilization relate in different ways to the existing political and legal structures and opportunities. For some collective actors, in particular NGOs and organized civil society, the legal structure of the EU appears as a given, and hence fundamental reform ought largely to take place through art. 48 TEU—the EU’s amendment rule—while forms of mobilization attempt to influence such processes 4 As argued by Gunther Teubner, it remains, however, doubtful that civil society actors can plausibly make a comprehensive claim to constituent power. Rather, their interventions remain largely confined to a pouvoir irritant (Teubner 2018: S17).

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by attempting to have an impact on agenda setting or even actual political reform. Key moments are the Convention of the early 2000s and the current Conference on the Future of Europe (as a potential precursor to actual reforms). Others, more radically oriented, actors, do not accept a harnessing of constituent power through constituted rules, and rather point to the need for an explicit (re-)activation of constituent power in the form of a constituent assembly (further discussed below).

11.4 The Historical Origins of Transnational Constituent Activism The democratic deficit, in general, and the constitutional deficit(-s), more in particular, are part-and-parcel of the design (bias) of the European integration project. The early European integration project of the 1950s prioritized efficiency, functionalism, and technocratic policymaking over popular and civil society participation. The founding fathers of the EU were predominantly averse to extensive popular input and rather endorsed an elitist and paternalist vision of European integration (Rose 2020; cf. Müller 2011: 142).5 The predecessor to the Commission, the High Authority, was to be the main driver of integration in the ‘Monnet method’. It was, however, and has remained so, a largely top-down, elitist institution. As claimed by Kevin Featherstone, ‘Monnet established the European integration process with a particular character - which was marked by technocracy and elitism - and … the legacy of this early strategy has been to afford the Commission a weak and fragile

5 As Jan-Werner Müller has it: ‘the creators of the European Community followed an indirect way of gaining legitimacy for their project: rather than having the peoples of the initial member states vote for supranational arrangements, they relied on technocratic and administrative measures agreed among elites to yield what Monnet time and again called ‘concrete achievements’—which were eventually to persuade citizens that European integration was a good thing’ (Müller 2011: 142).

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democratic legitimacy’ (Featherstone 1994: 150).6 The political legitimacy of the overall integration project stemmed in particular from the intergovernmental nature of integration, which made the member states the core political actors, flanked by technocratic institutions, in particular the European Commission and European Court of Justice (Rye et al. 2019: 5; Patel 2020, Chapter 4). Democratically oriented civil society organizations have been mobilizing and undertaking action for decades, with as main objective democratic reform of the European Union. Action regarding constitutional features of the EU was particularly prominent regarding the Convention related to the Charter of Fundamental Rights (1999) (Schönlau 2005) and the Convention of the Future of Europe (2002–2003). The latter saw the lobbying and participation of networks such as the European Referendum Campaign (ERC), which included NGOs such as Mehr Demokratie, the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, and Democracy International. The ERC was an initiative to influence the Convention on the Future of Europe with an eye on the organization of an EU-wide referendum and the inclusion of participatory instruments in the draft constitution. The specific goals of the network were: ‘to push for two ideas: first (also the first priority), a referendum on the European constitution; and second, the introduction of far-reaching elements of direct democracy (a right of citizens’ initiative including citizens’ referendums and obligatory referendums for constitutional amendments)’ (IRI Handbook 2004: 47; see also Democracy International 2005). The introduction of a legislative proposal in the draft in the last week of the Convention was the result of the ‘strong lobbying by the European Referendum campaign, who brought together some 100 NGOs involved in the promotion of direct democracy or citizenship rights’ (Garcia 2010: 6

The lack of democratic legitimacy was already forcefully denounced by Altiero Spinelli in his Il manifesto dei federalisti europei (1957): [But these [states] are sovereign. They decide and act without recognizing any other law or any other higher power but their own. They have to provide the protection of their own interests and of their own citizens, without having neither the obligation nor the possibility to be concerned with the interests of other states or other peoples]’. ‘Ma questi sono sovrani. Decidono ed agiscono senza riconoscere nessuna legge e nessun potere superiore al loro. Sono tenuti a provvedere alla tutela degli interessi propri e dei propri cittadini senza avere né il dovere né la possibilità di preoccuparsi degli interessi di altri Stati e di altri popoli’.

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98; IRI Handbook 2004; Szeligowska and Mincheva 2012: 272). As one of the campaigners argued: ‘It was the first time that people from different European countries lobbied for direct democracy during a reform of the European treaties and so it was somewhat surprising that this first effort was successful’ (IRI Handbook 2004: 47). The coalition of ERC continued campaigning, after the failure of the European constitution in the national referendum process, for the European Citizens’ Initiative and its concrete legal materialization, in the context of the successor Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty (in what became article 11 TEU) (Szeligowska and Mincheva 2012). In the current context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, it is hence no surprise that new coalitions have been organized in attempts to influence the Conference, its procedures, and its engagement with civil society and citizens. Some collective actors are also insisting on constituent matters, in terms of changes to the Treaties in under to enhance structural citizen participation in European politics, for instance, by means of a permanent citizens’ assembly (cf. Alemanno and Organ 2021). One significant coalition is Citizens Take Over Europe (CTOE) (see also the introduction to this volume), which gathers a large amount of civil society organizations, including those that were part of the earlier network around the Convention, such as Mehr Demokratie, ECI Campaign, and Democracy International, as well as the European civil and cultural network European Alternatives (originally set up in 2006). Constituent activism does not always focus on direct influence in the institutional process but may also take the form of bottom-up, extra-institutionally organized actions and forms of civil disobedience. A significant example is the DiEM25-project, which is driven by a strong emphasis on a democratic-constitutional approach, which puts popular sovereignty and citizen participation at the center of its project. In its draft manuscript a ‘European Constituent Assembly’, put forward in April 2018, DiEM25 stated that it will ‘show the corrupt elites that there is a European demos, and put democracy at the center of the European project’. The mission is indeed to ‘take power back from the elites’ (DiEM25 2018). And as expressed by Sre´cko Horvat—with Yanis Varoufakis, one of the founders of DiEM25—in an interview:

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I would say that reforms are not enough to make the European Union more democratic. What we need, I think, and it is much more radical than reform, is a new constituent process. That is, a process in which all citizens, including those of the Member States already on the margins in this multi-speed Europe, could participate (Horvat 2017; emphasis added).

In the period 2016–2019 DiEM25 employed both a strategy of what Niesen calls constituent action, in particular by endorsing ‘constructive disobedience’, and a strategy of constituent power, which includes constituent articulation (making public claims), constituent activation (attempts at shaping and mobilizing constituent power from below) and, in a call for a bottom-up constituent assembly which should lead to the adoption of a new constitution for Europe, radical constituting claims (DiEM25’s positions will be further discussed below).

11.5 European Constituent Activism: Reformist or Radical? Since the failed European Constitutional Treaty and the Eurozone crisis, claims with a constituent dimension, including by civil society actors, NGOs, think-tanks, and intellectuals, have been relatively frequent (cf. Patberg 2020). The upshot of such constituent activism is that the current European integration process is not working, or is even in a ‘polycrisis’ (Youngs 2018), and needs fundamental change. Transnational movements have been relatively actively engaging in making claims with constitutional dimensions and in the promotion of a constituent role for European citizens (cf. European Alternatives 2013; DiEM25 2017, 2018). Two triggers for such constituent articulations and activations are crucial. The first trigger lies, importantly, if not exclusively, in the policy reaction of the EU to the financial and economic crisis of 2007, sometimes described in terms of ‘authoritarian liberalism’ (Wilkinson 2021). Whereas the EU approach demonstrated a top-down, politicaltechnocratic form of European politics, civil society actors called for a radical democratization of the EU in response. A second trigger is the

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prominent rise of rightwing populist movements and parties with their vision of a ‘Europe of the nations’ or a ‘Europe of the peoples’ (cf. Becchi 2019; Scruton 2019).7 European civil society actors, often with a leftwing background, try to counter the populist call for a renationalization of the European Union by means of a leap forward towards a ‘Citizens’ Europe’. Transnational movements, various European CSOs, as well as groups of intellectuals (as, for instance, in the T-Dem proposal for a Transnational Parliamentary Assembly, Hennette et al. 2019) endorse change in a range of views and engage in different types of action, articulating diverse visions of a future European Union. Across the board a key focus is on a democratization of the existing EU, perceived as taking power away from existing institutions and member states, and the endorsement of a redistribution of political power to actors with allegedly more democratic legitimacy, such as parliamentarians, but also civil society and citizens. Clearly, not all of the proposals include comprehensive constituent claims. The majority indicates partial, incremental reforms and democratic ‘injections’ into the existing system (see Table 11.1). Most proposals would, however, to different degrees point towards the need for fundamental changes of the norms and institutions of the EU. As discussed briefly above, democratic transnational movements and coalitions, also in the form of ‘single issue’ or advocacy movements, such as with the campaign for the European Citizens’ Initiative, were already active during the Convention of the early 2000s, and have remained 7 It is crucial to consider this dimension also in relation to the Conference on the Future of Europe. The European Parliamentary group European Conservatives and Reformists has, for instance, organized a ‘Conference on the Future of Europe tour’ and launched its agenda of ‘Europe’s Future. A New Hope’. The ECR Co-Chairman Ryszard Legutko has stated regarding the CoFoE that ECR fears that ‘this process deliberately aims to undermine the nation-state democracies with the opinions of self-appointed leaders and federalist activists. At best, it will be a random and unrepresentative mix of voices that has no deeper legitimacy or meaning’. Another key actor in ECR, MEP Zdzisław Krasnod˛ebski, who is also observer in the Executive Board overseeing the Conference on the Future of Europe, has argued that it is ‘vital that we don’t forget what democracy really means. Democracy needs a cultural community and procedures that are clear and fair. Neither is the case here. This conference looks more like a public consultation rather than a genuine democratic exercise. We should not forget that the only functioning democracy is representative democracy’. See https://www.eupoliticalreport.eu/conference-on-the-future-of-europe/?utm_source=rss&utm_ medium=rss&utm_campaign=conference-on-the-future-of-europe.

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Table 11.1

317

Movement propositions towards change

Partial, sectoral change

Comprehensive change

Reformism

Radicalism

Expansion of representative democracy Change within the limits of the existing treaties Expansion of European citizenship (revising existing institutions) A constitutional Convention (according to art. 48) that is to lead to a new European constitution (comprehensive revision of the EU institutions)

Creating new, additional institutions, empowering citizens (such as a permanent citizens assembly or a new parliamentary assembly) (new institutions) A bottom-up, citizen-driven constitution-making process to result in a new European constitution (imagining novel, unprecedented processes of comprehensive change)

Source Own elaboration

active in various ways ever since (see, for instance, with regard to the ECI or the 2014 and 2019 European Parliamentary elections), while in the context of the 2021 Conference on the Future of Europe, various coalitions of civil society actors, recently set up or already existing, have developed proposals and initiatives (including, among others, the Citizens Take Over Europe network, Pulse of Europe, Civico, and Democracy International).

11.5.1 Constituent Claims by Transnational Movements Claims for a democratic renewal of the EU by means of bottomup assemblies and other forms of citizen participation were already made in the wake of the French and Dutch referenda of 2005. For instance, the international and alter-globalist network ATTAC made a radical—comprehensive constituent—claim in its Plan P proposal of 2008:

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In 2007, after having explored a range of possibilities offered by the current construction of Europe, we took the decision to draw up our own project for a European Constitution. This project provides a concrete example of the form “the Europe we want” could eventually take. We want to put the project into circulation in order to stimulate discussions – discussions that could lead to a text that has been adapted and approved by the largest number of Europeans possible. The finished version could then be published with a view to organizing a future European Constituent Assembly responsible for the drafting of a founding text to be put to referendum. (Attac 2008)

Another bottom-up project, initiated by the afore-mentioned civil society network European Alternatives equally takes as its point of departure the failed Convention on the Future of Europe: ‘We need to move beyond the unsatisfactory experience of the European Convention’ (European Alternatives 2012: 1). The promoters of the initiative: believe there is an alternative – the demand for a Europe where citizens, social forces, movements and associations have a say over their collective future. The construction of a Europe based on real democratic and political processes, able to interrupt the hegemony of austerity and reformulate a response to the crisis and open another road to Europe. We don’t need a Fiscal Pact, we need a Citizen Pact. A real pact of European citizens and residents leading to substantial reforms of the decision-making processes and institutions of the European Union. (European Alternatives 2012: 1; emphasis added)

European Alternatives (EurAlt) engage here in both constituent articulation (seeking to influence public debate) and in constituent activation (attempting to contribute to the formation of a constituent force of citizens and residents). EurAlt is particularly active in organizing bottomup, mobilizing and deliberative events, such as the TransEuropa festivals and the TransEuropa Caravans. EurAlt seemed not to explicitly call for a comprehensive new constitution at the time. It did, however, indicate that any future attempt needs to include meaningful citizen participation:

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Such a Pact can only be drafted by the activation of a real participatory and democratic process. We need to imagine – and begin constructing – the tools of transnational democracy in Europe. That is why we imagine a process that builds a real public debate, that engages citizens in local assemblies and that mobilises local authorities and institutions of proximity. There is no Citizen Pact without European Citizens. (European Alternatives 2012: 1; emphasis added)

In another statement, EurAlt argued that a ‘participative constitutional process’ is needed so as to construct: a democratic infrastructure which guarantees the common interest of Europeans at a continental scale, reinforces political agency of Europeans by empowering them to take part in European politics, and which restores democratic political control and oversight over financial markets and capital… Such a proposal for a democratic institutional infrastructure cannot be developed by a small number of experts or technocrats, but must be a broad and collaborative constitutional process involving the maximum of citizens. (European Alternatives 2013: 13; emphasis added)

In the run-up of the 2019 EP elections, Lorenzo Marsili and Niccolò Milanese, the founders of EurAlt, proposed a parallel organization of a Constituent Assembly for Europe, engaging in constituent activation by attempting to mobilize—in a partially extra-institutional fashion—a European constituent force: Hacking the 2019 elections as an act of civil disobedience could be the way to open up fresh alternatives. We propose using the occasion to elect a Constituent Assembly for Europe. …. This political and performative act would work as follows. All candidates in the official European parliamentary elections, as well as all citizens and any individual who declares an interest in the future of Europe, would be able to stand for the constituent assembly. These candidates may organise themselves in transnational lists, and European parties would be asked to field candidates for election, so as to create an immediate link between the emerging assembly and the European Parliament. Taking part in the assembly process would represent a stupendous opportunity to show commitment

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to the idea of citizens-led democratic renewal (Marsili and Milanese 2019).

Together with Ulrike Guérot, Lorenzo Marsili re-stated the claim for a constituent assembly in May 2020, including a radical constitutional claim, in relation to the delayed CoFoE: Fellow citizens: our national elites have failed us, and we must rescue the ideal of a united Europe from them. On 9 May, Europe Day, the European Union was planning on launching its Conference on the Future of Europe and opening a new chapter in the history of integration, following Brexit. These plans have now been delayed. And this may be just as well. The conference was structured to be yet another spectacle of top-down chatter without vision or ambition. We call on you, on us all, to take the lead and keep the flame alive in these times of crisis. In place of another insignificant institutional conference, we call for the establishment of a European Citizens’ Congress on the Future of Europe, forming the basis of a modern constituent assembly. Such a congress would be a hybrid structure: falling somewhere between a social movement, a political actor and a deliberative platform, providing a rallying point for all those wishing to resist the path of disintegration. (Marsili and Guérot 2020)

Marsili and Guérot make a radical claim abundantly clear by stating: ‘Europe today needs its own Tennis Court Oath, a second peaceful revolution after the one of 1989, and the birth of its own republic’.8 The main drive is constituent articulation, urging for the development and public advocacy of ‘common proposals for a European republic’ and a ‘constitutional reconstruction of the European space’.9 The comprehensive call for a novel constitution remains implicit, but is hinted at. 8 Marsili made a similar claim in 2015, see ‘A tennis court oath for Europe’, Open Democracy, at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/tennis-court-oath-for-europe/: When institutions begin to fail systemically, they are ultimately replaced or implode. It is up to our collective political agency to anticipate and guide this process. The King of France ultimately gave in to the requests of the Third Estate. But it was too late to save his kingdom or his head. 9 ‘A tennis court oath for Europe’, Open Democracy, at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/caneurope-make-it/tennis-court-oath-for-europe/.

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In the period 2016–2019, DiEM25 tended to follow a similar path in calling for a citizen-driven assembly. The original raison d’être of the transnational movement-party DiEM25, founded in 2016, was exactly the call for a bottom-up constituent assembly which was to result in an entirely novel political constitution for Europe. In fact, Lorenzo Marsili was member of the coordinating collective of DiEM25 until mid-2019, and one of the main protagonists regarding its constitutional agenda. DiEM25 continued in a way the path taken by ATTAC Europe in its Plan P, in its endorsement of a comprehensive or radical constitutional claim: ‘Imagining a democratic pan-European constitution and the process that may lead to it’.10 DiEM25 demanded that ‘Europe must abandon the already defunct phase of treaties towards a constitutional momentum: A common approach with a pan European perspective is necessary’. DiEM25 decried the ‘incompetent authoritarianism’ that had come to define the EU in its austerity policy, and which increasingly puts into relief the inadequacy of top-down, legalistic understanding of European integration. In 2018, DiEM25 proposed—based on an internal deliberative process among its members—that a constituent assembly was to be formed to counter the lack of citizen’s political agency. An assembly was to be set up in such a way that the ‘whole of European society has a voice’, which in a practical sense might take the following form: ‘25% will be randomly drawn among the entire body of the European citizens; 25% will be directly elected by the citizens via transnational lists; 25% will represent the member states, while the final 25% will represent territories and municipalities’ (DiEM25 2018).

10

Progressive Agenda for Europe, at: https://diem25.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/PolicyPap ers_protocol.pdf.

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11.5.2 Comprehensive Constituent Claims In the run-up to the elections for the European Parliament of 2019, a radical constituent agenda for Europe was probably most clearly endorsed by DiEM25.11 Its original bottom-up constituent perspective appeared to indicate a tangible distance from the European institutions. Indeed, as becomes clear from various statements of DiEM25 activists below, the movement puts little confidence in top-down, institutionally crafted attempts at reforming the European institutions, and endorses a decidedly bottom-up mobilization of constituent power instead. As one activist argued, ‘We should fight for a constituent assembly which can write a federal and democratic constitution for Europe, and this cannot be done by the States. There is a need for a mobilization by citizens which forms a kind of counter power and convinces the national political elites to follow them’ (interview 32/25 May 2019). The critique is directly aimed at a usurpation of constituent power by states and points into a societal direction. As another member of DiEM25 argued: For a legal order to be democratic, both its constitutional origin and everyday legislation must be democratic. But it is not good enough for citizens simply to be equal under law. They must also be its authors. This is the very idea of a pouvoir constituant —the power of the citizens 11

ATTAC Europe appears to be less active in the run-up to the Conference on the Future of Europe. Other ‘traditional’ European actors, such as the European Federalists, equally make more radical claims, but in the form of a radicalism within the existing institutional framework, respecting the existing norms and amendment rule (art. 48): The European Federalists openly call for “A constitutional conference”, the current crisis is showing that our Union need to enhance its competences in order to promptly defend the interest of its Citizens and Member States. The COVID-19 pandemic is showing that European Solidarity is essential to overcome current challenges and federalism is needed to make our European Institutions fit for purpose. This “constitutional conference” must include a concrete proposal for a new (Constitutional) Treaty to be submitted to the European Council by the European Parliament along the requirements of Art. 48 TEU, as we believe that it represents the only chance to really empower citizens, making them a meaningful part of the debate on the Future of Europe. (European Federalists 2021, see: https://www.federalists.eu/conference-on-the-future-of-europe/the-conference-explained) Also the Spinelli Group makes repeated claims for a ‘constituent process’, but ‘the legal reality is that the next revision of the treaties has to be undertaken according to the existing provisions of Lisbon’ (Spinelli Group 2018).

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to constitute legitimate political authority. This authority then represents the sovereignty of the citizens, the right to decide on the affairs of the political community, as defined through a constitution. The EU does wield this authority, having the power to make laws which directly apply to its citizens. The treaties gave it this power. The fundamental problem is that this law has no democratic origin: the power of the Union was instead constituted by the nation states. The Union’s authority is not democratic. (Hufton 2020)

In the words of an Italian DiEM25 activist, a core challenge is ‘to bring European citizens to become actors or, as we would like, a political constituent actor. That means making European citizens an actor capable of changing the power relations in the framework of European integration. Bring European integration to a different dimension to the one we are in now’. The way the EU functions currently, however, means that citizens ‘mobilize against the existing Union, they mobilize against fascism, nationalism but this unfortunately is not enough to make European citizens become an active constituent actor’ (interview 31/14 December 2019). The activist clearly raised the point of constituent activation and the conundrum of creating a democratic Union in which the original sin of a non-democratic wielding of constituent power is replaced by authentic constituent power in terms of citizens being co-authors of the fundamental laws that guide the European project. The problem is exactly this: at the moment transnational parties almost don’t exist. There is some very weak transnational movement, and citizens don’t even know that they can play this role, they don’t think about it, they think that it’s up to the States and they only think that the Union is something given, a burden if anything, certainly not something they can get involved in. So, we as DiEM discussed this many times on various occasions. In particular, a few years ago, I took part in a working group in Naples, an event where not even Yanis was present at that time. A working group where we elaborated, me and a couple of people who were there, a proposal which was the following, and then I kept working on it and I took it to the European level, let’s say. The proposal was the following: to use the tool of the illegal referendum - illegal is a word that

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the Germans don’t like, so let’s say a referendum that is not allowed by the treaties. A referendum that States don’t authorize, they don’t tell you: “yes, you can hold it”. So, it means organizing a referendum at least in the countries of the Eurozone and ask Europeans “Do you want a Constituent Assembly for the European Union? Yes or no?” And self-organize it, obviously DiEM alone could not self-organize it but DiEM could - with the contacts that it still has, also the personalities that it has - it could have built a wider movement, in all countries, parties, civil society, personalities interested in promoting this campaign, and this is the challenge that I fought for and that I lost because I didn’t manage to get this thing started. But if it had started…we received objections - I am talking from outside DiEM - there were two problems, first of all, it is a huge thing that nobody has ever tried and therefore there are logistical difficulties of all kinds. (interview 31/14 December 2019)

DiEM25 put significant emphasis on the comprehensive constitutional claim in its European New Deal, which proposed the future promotion of a ‘Constitutional Assembly Process, involving Representatives elected on trans-national tickets, to manage the evolution of Europe into a democratic political entity and the replacement of all existing European Treaties with a democratic European Constitution’ (DiEM 2017; emphasis added). In 2019, DiEM25 did not manage to get a representative elected in the European Parliament. The constituent project anyhow proceeded, leading to the adoption of a ‘Campaign for Democratic Relaunch of EU - Towards a European Constitution’ at DiEM25’s Assembly, held in Prague in October 2019. The campaign related explicitly to the Conference of the Future of Europe and an overwhelming majority of DiEM25 members voted in favour.12 From 2020 onwards, however, the transnational constituent dimension of DiEM25 has become less of a priority, and the focus is more on short- and medium-term goals, as well as more broadly, on a bottom-up process of democratic deliberative action, for instance, on the urban level. 12

See https://diem25.org/diem25-unveils-its-european-new-deal-an-economic-agenda-for-eur opean-recovery/.

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For some activists, such as a member of the German national collective, it was anyhow not entirely clear why a European Constitution would be central to DiEM. This activist was rather interested in the bottomup, participatory process that might lead to a constitution (interview 27/12 February 2020). Also another prominent German activist emphasized the importance of a bottom-up process, that is, of ‘crowd-sourcing’ a constitution (interview 13/23 November 2019). In an interview in Prague with a central member of DiEM25, the fact that a European constitution was not, anymore, a priority for DiEM25 was confirmed (interview 16/25 November 2019). The DiEMer argued that DiEM25 believed that the Conference of the Future of Europe was not ‘going to be more than a rather cynical exercise’, but equally indicated that a ‘lot of good people, good democrats will want to engage with it. And we want to have a conversation with them, about why citizens assemblies, randomly organized all over Europe must be the starting point for us to move towards such a Future of Europe conference. Start with the people, nowhere else’. In the current context of the belated Conference of the Future of Europe, DiEM25 appears sceptical about the process and does not engage publicly. In general, while in recent years the Europeanization and politicization of European civil society seems on the rise (see Cooper et al. 2021), propositions for a comprehensive new European constitution appear less prominent and most propositions from civil society take a ‘reformist’ rather than a ‘radical’ constituent stance. This is clearly in contrast with some of the distinctive mobilizations on the transnational level in recent years, in particular DiEM25 and EurAlt, but also the new transnational movement-party Volt Europa.13 Table 11.2 sums up some of the most 13

In its policy programme for the European Parliamentary elections of 2019, Volt stated: Draft and adopt a European Constitution. Finally, in order to streamline the Union’s functioning, Volt strongly supports the adoption of a European Constitution replacing existing EU treaties and detailing the fundamental rights and responsibilities of citizens and the EU’s institutional arrangements. As a legal and political document, this Constitution should be concise, readable, and understandable by citizens. Unlike current treaties, it should not try and integrate all aspects and provisions of EU law, but focus on core institutional aspects and leave the rest for the legislature to record into regular EU legislation. Volt strongly supports the writing and adoption of this Constitution by representatives of European citizens. (Volt Europa 2019: 186–187)

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prominent claims made in recent years. Claims around constitutional change on the transnational level face several complexities with regard to the activation of constituent power. A first dimension is whether only representatives and institutional representatives can be ‘supreme law-makers’, and citizens can only exercise ‘electoral power’ (and hence are not enjoying constituent, but only constituted power) (as in Federal Constitution in Table 11.2) or whether direct citizen involvement is the only means towards legitimate constitutional change (as in the second row of the table: European Constitutional Assembly). A second issue is whether the European poly-crisis needs to be addressed through partial change, with changes within the limits of the Treaties (in the table: European Assembly and European Citizens Assembly) or whether a structural, total form of change is needed, in which the ‘material’ Treaties are replaced by a veritable Constitution (in the table: Federal Constitution and European Citizens Assembly). A third question is whether the exercise of constituent power can only be legitimate within the limits of the ‘material constitution’, following its procedures of revision (i.e., art. 48 TEU) or whether constituent power may be exercised in ways not stipulated by existing norms. A fourth question regards whether true constituent power is to be channelled through the institutions or whether it can only be exercised by the European citizens themselves— in a Rousseauian fashion—and can only be imagined as being a popular, bottom-up, force and in an extra-institutional manner (cf. Colón-Ríos 2020, Chapter 10) (in the table, the idea of a European Constitutional Assembly seems to come close to the Rousseauian ideal14 ) (cf. Niesen 2019a).15

14

In other proposals by DiEM25, such an extra-institutional dimension is more explicit, as in the idea of an ‘illegal’ pan-European referendum. 15 A further dimension, not addressed here, is the dual or ‘split’ constituent power of European citizens, that is, related to the national and the transnational levels, cf. Niesen 2019a), as suggested by Habermas in terms of ‘mixed’ constituent power (Habermas 2012). Markus Patberg provides a similar discussion of four narratives of ‘public narratives of constituent power’ in the EU (Patberg 2020). Patberg focusses on the specific understanding of the political subject related to constituent power. My focus here is on the type of (constituent) change that is being endorsed.

Reformist/partial change

European assembly “80% of the members of the European Assembly should be members of the national parliaments of the countries that sign the Treaty (in proportion to the population of the countries and the political groups), and 20% from the present European Parliament (in proportion to the political groups)” (T-Dem; Hennette et al. 2019: 188)

European citizens assembly

Actors Institution/ representation oriented

Citizen/people oriented

Democratic claims vis-à-vis the EU

Actors/change

Table 11.2

(continued)

Federal constitution “As things stand, any member state or EU institution, including the Parliament, may take the initiative and trigger constitutional reform. When the time comes, the European Parliament must in the interest of democracy assert its right to insist that a Convention is summoned to prepare the amended treaty. That Convention will be composed of European and national parliamentarians, the Commission and representatives of the heads of government” (Spinelli Group 2018) European constitutional assembly

Radical/total change

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16 See

https://europeancitizensassembly.eu/.

Source Own elaboration

Radical/total change “The European Constituent Assembly imagined by DiEM25 is different from the classic ones, which included just elected representatives. Considering the recent experiences of countries such as Iceland, Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands, DiEM25 will propose to inspire the European Constituent Assembly to the new mixed criteria of participatory and direct democracy. The Assembly shall be composed as follows: 25% will be randomly drawn among the entire body of the European citizens; 25% will be directly elected by the citizens via transnational lists; 25% will represent the member states, while the final 25% will represent territories and municipalities. This system will allow all the main components of European society to be represented and to act as authentic constituent actors” “[The] purpose will be to promote a Constitutional Assembly Process, involving representatives elected on transnational tickets, to manage the evolution of Europe into a democratic political entity and the replacement of all existing European Treaties with a democratic European Constitution” (DiEM25 2017, 2018)

Reformist/partial change

“The EU’s conspicuous democratic deficit builds on the underlying crisis of representative democracy. Far from new, citizens’ mistrust towards national and European institutions, as well as towards the political elites, persists throughout the continent. It is urgent to rethink the role of the people in Europe: in times of great uncertainty, especially, citizens’ involvement in decision-making becomes paramount to strengthening our democracies. But to overcome mistrust towards the EU and address the socio-economic and environmental challenges ahead, we need more inclusive and innovative instruments of participatory democracy beyond the nation-state In that perspective, we are asking for the creation of a permanent transnational forum for deliberation and citizens’ participation: a European Citizens’ Assembly” (CTOE and Civico 2021)16

(continued)

Actors/change

Table 11.2

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11.6 The Conference on the Future of Europe: A Constitutional Moment? The attempt to adopt a political constitution for the European Union in the early 2000s de factoleft constituent power in the hands of constituted power, that is, the constitution-making process was dominated by political elites and institutional actors, whereas wider society was only involved to a limited extent (cf. Patberg 2020: 215). Similar arguments could be made regarding the earlier Convention on the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Schönlau 2005). The main consultation of citizens took place ex post, in the subsequent referendums, which led to the Constitution’s failure. As Andrew Arato states, [c]ertainly neither one or the other [the draft Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty] was the work of any European people, nor was it the product of a primarily participatory process. Neither could be seen as the final version that European institutions should take, especially as neither would have brought the masters of the treaties under the constitution of a genuinely “constitutional” amendment rule based on majorities of some kind. (Arato 2018: 437–438)

Hence, the constituted powers are able to revise the constitutional norms of the EU, but have not done so in a manner that has led to the constitutional limitation of the revision of such norms (and hence a form of European constitutionalism). Indeed, in article 48 TEU, ‘consensus’ and ‘ratification by all member states’ are crucial. In this, the ‘constitutional question’ or the ‘constitutional deficit’ of the EU, as argued above, has not disappeared. Constituent dimensions have particularly been stimulated by the ‘poly-crisis’ which developed over the last decade (in terms of fiscal matters, European solidarity, as well as crucial matters for which pan-European coordination appears unavoidable, such as migration, health, and the rule of law). In other words, the constitutional deficit has disappeared neither in the form of specific dimensions to be constitutionalized (e.g., fiscal policy, social policy, citizen participation), nor in the sense of the creation of genuinely constitutional and democratic rules of political operation.

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The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) potentially indicates a (partial) return to a constituent dimension in European politics. Even if the Council denies the Conference’s status of a convention, the endeavour nevertheless echoes the Convention on the Future of Europe of the early 2000s in name, but also in its set up (the Conference is led by the presidents of the three EU institutions and aims at the inclusion of civil society and citizens) (von Ondarza and Ålander 2021: 4). The need for structural reform is undeniable, not least as many of the EU’s responses to recent crises have seen ad hoc and unfinished legislative reactions, regarding inter alia migration policy, health policy, and the banking union. Even more important is the open question of selection of EU leaders and the ongoing weaknesses in democratic legitimacy (von Ondarza and Ålander 2021: 4). Constituent dimensions are sensed and acknowledged by EU institutions. Already in 2017, the EP, in its report ‘Possible evolutions of and adjustments to the current institutional set-up of the European Union’, indicated the need for a ‘constituent process’ in terms of ‘Treaty amendment’ and a new ‘Convention’ (EP 2017: 18). The current president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stated in her opening address to the European Parliament (still as a candidate for the presidency) that she wanted to engage with significant reforms, such as transnational lists and a right of initiative for the EP. In the Political Guidelines accompanying her presidency, von der Leyen argued that she was ‘ready to follow up on what is agreed, including by legislative action if appropriate. I am also open to Treaty change’ (von der Leyen 2019). In the meantime, also due to the heavily delayed start of the Conference, aspirations towards significant reform have been toned down importantly due to pressure from the Council as well as a letter by 12 small member states (indicating not being willing to engage in any legislative changes).17 Also EU ambassadors steered clear of committing to any possible treaty change, arguing that there is ‘ample room for improvement under the current set-up’ (Nicolas 2020).

17

‘EU’s dirty dozen pour cold water on Conference on Future of Europe’, 23 March 2021, Financial Times.

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The CoFoE was originally put forward in 2019, originating in an idea of Emanuel Macron (cf. Fabbrini 2020). In a joint non-paper on the Conference on the Future of Europe, France and Germany suggested a ‘strong involvement of our citizens’ and a ‘bottom-up process’, with ‘EU-wide participation of our citizens on all issues discussed’. The plan was subsequently adopted by the Von der Leyen Commission, which put strong emphasis on the involvement of citizens, civil society, and European institutions as ‘equal partners’ and has even, as remarked above, indicated an initial willingness to consider Treaty change. The EP has presented two documents on the CoFoE in 2020, inter alia proposing the idea of citizens’ agoras. While the Council has endorsed the idea of a Conference, it has shown clear hesitance towards citizen involvement as well as towards Treaty change. Core issues with regard to citizen involvement and empowerment concern the effective influence citizens might have through the CoFoE (in terms of the actual translation of citizens’ views in policy-making and reform), the mobilization of EU-wide participation among citizens, and the willingness of institutions and member states to consider clear legislative follow-up to citizens recommendations and to consider structural reform. The Conference is aiming to be innovative with regard to the inclusion of individual citizens (through a Digital Platform, through Citizens’ Panels), but at the same time to be marginalizing civil society networks and transnational movements. Originally planned for two years, the Conference is set to end in 2022. Various observers argue that the Conference represents a significant opportunity and ought not to be wasted. As Nicoletta Pirozzi states: ‘EU institutions and political leaders should be ready to face uncomfortable truths regarding citizen preferences on the overall direction of the EU project, and to take them into consideration in their decisions’ (Pirozzi 2021). And as Nicolai von Ondarza and Minna Ålander argue: ‘An EU that is only capable of reform during crises cannot be stable in the long run. As a political construct with loose direct links to its citizens and a scarcely evolving European public sphere, the EU is particularly dependent on output legitimacy. Every existential crisis damages its acceptance among the population. Consequently, the Conference needs to demonstrate that the EU is capable of generating reform initiatives without acute crises pressure’ (von Ondarza and Ålander 2021: 3).

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The CoFoE is of direct relevance for bottom-up inclusion and our discussion of constituent power and mobilization in several ways. First, procedurally, the operational process of the Conference (which is not supposed to follow the Convention method) is to significantly allow for civic and civil society participation, deliberation, and input. It hence is to provide a form of input-oriented legitimacy, relating civic participation to political and legislative processes, and from which potential suggestions for constitutional change may originate. Hence, in principle, it is open to some of the reformist constituent articulations discussed in this chapter. Second, the CoFoE would only have any real efficacy if it addresses the level of the political , that is, if there is a political will to indicate structural reforms with regard to the democratic functioning of the EU and to the rule of law, including on the constitutional/treaty level. As discussed, both dimensions are an important part of the political claims and endorsements that come from transnational movements and civil society organizations. In addition, pressure for change comes from the EP, in particular the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO),18 and from academic experts. Regarding civil society, the pan-European network Citizens Take over Europe (CTOE), in which European Alternatives participates, and which was formed in relation to the pending CoFoE in 2019, has developed 10 principles that ought to guide the CoFoE process (CTOE 2021). CTOE calls for inclusive, multi-level, and bottom-up participation and deliberation in the context of the CoFoE, but aims also at structural reforms so as to ‘the introduction of European citizens’ assemblies as a regular and permanent body for popular policy deliberation’ (emphasis added). CTOE further endorses the idea of a revision of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights as put forward by the German lawyer and writer Ferdinand von Schirach (2021). To address new challenges, von Schirach calls for new rights, regarding the environment, digital self-determination, artificial intelligence, the truth, globalization, and a human rights complaint. The latter entails the idea that ‘all human beings are able to bring a human rights complaint in 18

With regard to the EP and in particular AFCO, a motion for a European Parliament resolution calls for ‘permanent participatory mechanisms’ as well as an ‘independent Civil Society Forum’ to ‘monitor the process and its follow-up by the EU institutions’ (AFCO 2021: 9–10).

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case of a systematic violation of the rights of this Charter to the European Court of Justice’ (Schirach 2021: 11). Individual members of the CTOE coalition, such as Maarten de Groot, a former DiEM25 member and current participant in the CTOE coalition, have further suggested to turn the amendment rule of article 48 TEU, which outlines the Convention method (48:3), into a ‘permanent constituent assembly’ (de Groot 2021). Also a recent LSE report, co-authored by European Alternatives’ Niccolò Milanese (Cooper et al. 2021), calls for permanent forms of citizen participation: Create a permanent European Citizens Assembly: Recent experiences with citizens assemblies in Ireland, in Belgium, in France, in Germany and elsewhere have shown that a sortition-based format of citizen participation can create social consensus for change, can build social trust, and can reinvigorate politics. A European Citizens Assembly would be a pioneering transnational experiment which should be led by independent civil society, with a view to providing a permanent space in which the European Union can fulfil its obligations of dialogue with citizens and civil society under Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty (Cooper et al. 2021: 36).

In sum, what makes the Conference relevant for the constituent power is not merely its name echoing the Convention of the early 2000s. The EU’s intention to collectively formulate orientations for the future of Europe regarding a Union that faces important crises on various fronts can hardly be disconnected from a serious consideration of meaningful change with a substantive, and even constituent dimension (citizendriven changes of the existing rules of the game). This dimension is heightened by the continuous institutional lip service to involve European citizens, which is an indication of the protracted problem of democratic legitimacy (Alemanno 2020). A conundrum clearly remains. If the constitutional deficit of the EU includes the ‘original sin’ of having been constructed without recourse to constituent power and popular sovereignty, then it is difficult to see how partial ‘injections’ of such power—in the form of, for instance, permanent citizens’ assemblies— would render the EU a democratic union in any genuine way. In a

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profound sense, constituent power entails that the ‘members of a collectivity constitute the political forms of authority in order to organize and institutionalize their common free life. The addressees of the law become its authors’ (Kalyvas 2018: 87; cf. Patberg 2020). Piecemeal, incremental changes to the EU institutions would only partially get closer to such an ideal. It is difficult to imagine—given our collective immersion in modern political and constitutional imaginaries—any other solution than a full-blown, extra-institutional constituent assembly which re-constitutes the European polity. As discussed, claims to this extent have been made by few civil society actors in the current European societal–political landscape, including European Alternatives and DiEM25, but are not upfront in the context of the CoFoE.

11.7 Concluding Remarks The European integration project faces a ‘poly-crisis’, which, according to many, requires fundamental changes. Fundamental change almost inevitably involves some form of response to the constitutional deficit. As De Groot has argued, ‘if the current politicization of EU politics is not accompanied by fundamental democratization—something that requires treaty change—it is only the anti-democratic populists who will profit from this, with catastrophic consequences for our Union’ (De Groot 2021: 242). As discussed in the chapter, the constitutional deficit consists in the ‘original sin’ of a European integration project, which has never invoked constituent power, but has become evermore politically relevant. In addition, not only has the European project not emerged from an act, or series of acts, of constituent power, its structures and institutions are themselves elite-biased, despite modest, and comparatively rather inconsequential, reforms towards forms of societal and citizen participation (including the European Citizens’ Initiative). A further dimension of the constitutional deficit regards the uneven nature of European constitutionalization, with a one-sided emphasis on the economic constitution (cf. Wilkinson 2021; Brunkhorst 2016). Even if analogies to nation-state based constitutions should only be made with caution, a comparison with the range of functions that domestic constitutions tend to perform

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does make clear the absence of political, participatory, and symbolic functions on the transnational level. Admittedly, in the complexity of a multi-level European constitutional order, all functions of the modern constitutional model would not necessarily need to be reproduced (this is clearly not even the case in all domestic contexts). Nevertheless, existing articulations of forms of pouvoir irritant and expressions of constituent claims—as discussed in this chapter—are in need forms of acceptance, elaboration, and processing, as do citizens’ claims more in general, in a European Union in need of popular legitimacy. As discussed in the chapter, different forms of political action with constituent dimensions may be identified: constituent articulation, constituent activation, constituent action, and radical constituting claims. Such claims are now generally raised by ‘insurgent Europeanists’ (Cooper et al. 2021) (in this volume often described as EuroAlternativists [Moskvina] or AltEuropeanists [Scharenberg]), in addition to the claims of the ‘traditional Europeanists’ of the ‘Brussels-focussed policy community’ (Cooper et al. 2021: 5). The European activists are part of a structural manifestation of democratic demands by a range of national and transnational collective actors, active in particular around European Parliamentary elections and currently in relation to the Conference on the Future of Europe. Constituent claims, however, face a number of complexities and involve contrasting positions, in relation to the status of citizens (as supreme law-makers?), the breadth of necessary democratic change, the relation between constituent power and procedures, and the role of European citizens in constituent processes. The constituent question was explicitly put on the political agenda in the early 2000s. While the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002– 2003) ultimately failed to produce a European Constitution, the idea has in different guises and forms been reproposed ever since. In the context of the current Conference on the Future of Europe—of which the constitution-making potential is explicitly denied by many—many of the public demands nevertheless relate to some form of constituent power, even if largely avoiding what seems in many ways a ‘taboo’, that is, a new political constitution for the European project. The irony may

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be that a democratic and constitutional European Union, enjoying broad legitimacy, may never be accomplished without a comprehensive exercise of constituent power, involving the European citizens in prominent ways.

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Index

A

Activism 8, 19–21, 33–36, 38, 40, 44, 45, 52–54, 63, 67–72, 76, 82, 84, 85, 207, 212, 279, 304, 308, 312, 314, 315 Advocacy 194, 316, 320 Afro-Europeans 21, 63, 76, 77 Agency 68, 70, 73, 75–80, 82, 95, 131, 134, 140, 319–321 Alter-globalization 64, 74, 75, 82, 274, 283 Another Europe Is Possible 63, 70, 128 Anti-austerity 37, 65, 85, 92, 93, 206, 210, 213, 272, 283, 287, 288, 290, 293–295 mobilisations 67 Anti-nationalist Europeanism 20, 35, 40, 52 Athen’s Spring 150

ATTAC 64, 317, 321, 322 Aufstehen 43, 291, 292 Authoritarian liberalism 24, 191, 192, 315

B

Balibar, Étienne 99, 102, 107, 118, 162, 165 Boltanski, Luc 21, 93, 94, 100, 101 Brexit 10, 12, 21, 59, 67, 69–71, 74, 89, 128, 303, 320

C

Citizenship 52, 53, 69, 71, 83, 86, 99, 313, 317 Citizens Take Over Europe (CTOE) 2, 8, 305, 311, 314, 317, 332

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Blokker (ed.), Imagining Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81369-7

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Index

Civic order of worth 94, 96–98, 100, 107 Claims-making 308, 310 Collective self-image 235, 253, 254, 263 Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) 1, 3, 4, 18, 26, 304, 306, 307, 312, 314, 316, 317, 320, 322, 329–331, 335 Constituent activism 308, 312, 314, 315 Constituent power/pouvoir constituant 3, 4, 20, 24, 26, 264, 276, 304, 308, 310–312, 315, 322, 323, 326, 329, 332–335 Constitutional contestation 310 Constitutional deficit 26, 304–306, 329, 333, 334 Constitutionalism 14, 20, 235–238, 246, 254–259, 261, 264, 275, 276, 278, 280, 304, 307–310, 329 Constitutionalization 19, 24–26, 236, 237, 243, 244, 251, 254, 258, 259, 264, 304, 309, 334 Constitutional mobilization 20, 305, 306, 308–311 Constitutional resistance 26, 305, 310 Convention 7, 132, 303, 304, 310–314, 316, 317, 327, 330, 332, 333 Convention on the Future of Europe 9, 26, 303, 305, 307, 310, 313, 318, 330, 335 Convergence of struggles 82, 86 Cosmopolitanism 12, 14, 16, 18, 109, 123, 154, 171, 181–183, 197, 198, 226

Czechia 36, 41

D

Debt crisis 205, 210, 222 De-colonial activism 21, 64 Deconstitutionalization 237 Democracy 5, 7, 9–16, 21–23, 26, 37, 53, 65, 90, 92, 95, 97, 98, 102, 117, 118, 124, 126, 127, 129–132, 134, 136, 139, 150, 153, 154, 160, 163, 164, 169, 170, 178, 181, 184, 185, 187, 190–192, 198, 213, 223–225, 237, 243, 247, 248, 252, 253, 256, 258, 259, 263, 272, 275, 289, 290, 294, 313, 314, 316, 319 Democracy International 9, 313, 314, 317 Democratization 8, 19, 22, 24, 34, 54, 90, 97, 100, 118, 125, 127, 195, 213–216, 223, 240, 251, 307, 315, 316, 334 Detached space 97, 100 Die Linke 43, 190, 290–293 DiEM25 2, 3, 8, 20–24, 26, 34–36, 39, 40, 42–47, 49, 52–54, 59, 90–92, 94, 95, 97–100, 103, 105–109, 118, 119, 125–135, 138, 139, 150–155, 158, 161–170, 189, 190, 192–199, 206–215, 222, 227, 228, 263, 274, 305, 306, 314, 315, 321–326, 328, 333, 334 Domestic order of worth 95

Index

E

Eastern Europe 78–80 Economic crisis 7, 15, 18, 19, 24, 89, 153, 179, 184, 199, 212, 217, 315 Engagement with a plan 22, 90, 95 Engagement with familiarity 90, 103, 105, 108 Engagement with justification 107 Environmentalism 37 Essex School of Discourse Analysis 119 Ethnography 21, 62, 63, 68 EU referendum 62, 63, 70 Euroalternativism 90, 92, 128, 153 Eurocentrism 83 Eurocommunism 23, 177, 178, 180, 186, 199 European Alternatives 2, 3, 7, 8, 21, 26, 60, 62, 63, 70, 71, 73, 84, 90, 92, 98, 100, 102–104, 106, 107, 263, 305, 306, 311, 314, 318, 332–334 European Charter of Fundamental Rights 332 European Commission 39, 75, 126, 179, 182, 185, 186, 238, 280, 288, 313 European constitution 2, 7, 8, 18–20, 97, 100, 103, 104, 127, 133, 154, 215, 259, 303, 304, 306, 307, 311, 313, 314, 317, 318, 324, 325, 328, 335 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 238, 306, 313, 333 European goals 44, 52 European identities 37, 38, 41, 43, 51, 52, 68, 81, 83, 91, 103, 106, 108, 124, 139, 195

343

European integration 1–4, 12–16, 21, 22, 24–26, 35–37, 40, 41, 46, 53, 54, 64, 107, 117, 128, 139, 187, 205, 206, 208, 217, 219, 220, 228, 236–238, 255, 260–262, 287, 290, 293, 304, 305, 312, 315, 321, 323, 334 Europeanism 14, 21, 37, 43, 45, 134, 184, 186 Europeanization 23, 35, 38, 64, 92, 179, 183–187, 189, 191, 196, 197, 199 European New Deal (END) 8, 127, 135, 162, 163, 196, 207, 211, 213–215, 217, 227, 324 European Parliament elections 63, 129, 134, 138, 186, 187, 189 European public sphere 90–93, 100, 103, 108, 125, 331 European Referendum Campaign (ERC) 313 European Social Forums 65, 74, 287 European space 22, 53, 90, 93, 96, 98, 100, 106–108, 320 European Spring 135, 136, 138, 196–198 European Technocrats 263 European Union (EU) 1–5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17–19, 22, 24–26, 33–40, 42, 45, 52–54, 61–63, 65, 66, 68–70, 79, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 117–119, 124–128, 132, 134–136, 139, 153, 154, 161–167, 169, 179, 183–187, 189–196, 200, 206, 212–214, 219, 220, 224, 225, 227, 228, 235, 262, 271, 272, 274, 280–283, 287–289,

344

Index

293, 295, 303–308, 311–313, 315–318, 320, 321, 323, 325, 327, 329–336 Europe of the Peoples 9, 12, 17, 118, 316 Euroscepticism 3, 12, 13, 21, 37, 92, 184, 191 EU Troika 153

H

Habermas, Jurgen 53, 92, 108, 326 Hall, Stuart 79, 169 Hegemony 23, 25, 152, 154–158, 161, 169, 170, 180, 258, 318 Humanism 220, 221, 225–227

I F

Feminism 71, 73 Financial crisis 24, 83, 205, 210, 287, 288 Financial globalization 211, 220, 222, 227 Flagging 61, 66 Formats of engagement 90, 107 Fortress Europe 69, 163 Fraser, Nancy 170 Functional differentiation 237, 239, 243, 250, 251, 253, 254

G

Germany 36, 43, 47, 51, 76, 83, 89, 91, 107, 135, 196, 212, 288, 290, 292, 295, 331, 333 Global constitutionalism 235 Gramsci, Antonio 152, 155, 158, 159 Grass-root democracy 221 Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE) 75, 207, 211, 214, 217–219 Green transition 214, 217–220, 227, 228

Iglesias, Pablo 177, 178, 187, 188 Indeterminacy 170, 237, 243, 246, 247, 249, 250, 252–254, 258, 261, 262 Information overload 48, 53 Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe 313 Internationalism 23, 53, 180 International law 277–279, 286

L

Labour Party 66, 76, 128, 150, 163, 164, 290 Laclau, Ernesto 20, 95, 120, 123, 150–152, 155–161, 164, 166, 168–170, 258 La France insoumise 164, 179, 186, 188, 193 Language barriers 49, 109 Lefort, Claude 25, 237, 238, 240–243, 246–250, 252–255, 257, 258, 262, 263 Left-wing 3, 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20–23, 33–38, 40, 43, 54, 98, 118, 132, 140, 149–151, 153, 157, 161, 163, 167–169, 188, 206, 209, 210, 217 Left-wing parties 59, 150, 153, 188 Litigation 309

Index

Loach, Ken 34 Luhmann, Niklas 25, 237, 239–243, 245, 246, 250–252, 254, 255, 258, 262, 264, 275 M

McDonnel, John 34 Mediterranean 21, 59, 64, 80–82, 85 Mehr Demokratie 9, 313, 314 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc 188, 190, 191, 197 Migrants 17, 21, 66, 69, 70, 78, 80, 99, 107, 138, 163, 283, 288, 291, 292 Militant research 63 Mouffe, Chantal 9, 20, 95, 118, 160, 161, 170, 206 N

Nation 17, 20, 33, 35, 38, 40–43, 97, 119, 121, 122, 162, 165, 167, 168, 181, 257 Nationalism 33, 40–43, 62, 78, 85, 101, 119, 121, 122, 154, 182, 197, 206, 213, 214, 216, 272, 323 Neoliberalism 15, 39, 65, 74, 93, 170, 183, 187, 193, 206–211, 213, 215, 218, 220–222, 224, 227 New International Economic Order 17, 272, 282, 284 Now the People! 23, 189, 193 P

Pan-Europeanism 287

345

Party of the European Left (PEL) 185, 186, 199 People-as-One 238, 247, 249, 253, 254, 257–259 Personal relationships 50 Plan B 23, 189–197, 199 Podemos 75, 118, 132, 163, 164, 177–179, 184–189, 191–193, 288, 290 Political representation 185, 236, 237, 256, 257 Populism 2, 3, 7, 9–14, 16–18, 20, 22–25, 62, 90, 95, 117–124, 134, 139, 140, 149–151, 154, 157–159, 163, 165–171, 179–186, 188, 189, 191–193, 197, 199, 205, 206, 209, 213, 214, 220, 221, 236, 237, 249, 255, 256, 258, 259, 261–263, 271–274, 276, 277, 281–284, 286–290, 293, 295 Populist constitutionalism 34, 236–238, 254, 255, 257, 259, 261, 264 Post-nationalism 10, 15, 100, 122, 126 Pragmatic sociology 90, 91, 93, 94, 107 Prague assembly 44, 51 Progressive International 40, 97, 135, 198 Progressivism 12, 226 Proximate space 97, 101, 103

R

Radical change 6, 15, 220, 221, 223, 227 Radical democracy 170

346

Index

Referendums 313, 329 Reformism 215, 221, 222, 227, 317 Reformist change 8, 13, 327, 328

S

Sassen, Saskia 34, 105 Social movements 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 26, 33–38, 53, 63–65, 68, 74, 95, 96, 152, 157, 160, 171, 190, 191, 240, 256, 271, 274, 276, 283, 287, 290, 291, 304, 305, 308, 309, 320 Southern Europe 81, 188, 193 Southern European countries 153, 179, 187, 191, 288 Sovereigntism international 23, 179, 182, 183, 189, 197, 199 Sovereignty national 4, 16, 17, 23, 25, 167, 181, 182, 189, 192, 274, 277, 281, 286, 288, 289 popular 53, 93, 130, 182, 183, 189, 192, 236, 258, 271, 273, 276, 277, 279, 281, 282, 285, 289, 295, 314, 333 Spinelli, Altiero 313, 322 Syriza 8, 59, 75, 118, 150, 179, 183–185, 187–191, 196, 199, 288–290, 293

Thévenot, Laurent 21, 93–96, 100, 101 Totalitarianism 247, 248, 254, 257 Transeuropa Caravans 63, 104, 318 Transeuropa festival 71, 77, 80, 104, 318 Transnational activism 20, 21, 34–36, 44, 52, 54, 279 Transnational cooperation 20, 36, 38, 43, 44, 49, 52, 53, 93, 285 Transnationalism 22, 23, 34, 35, 37, 44, 52, 54, 120, 123, 128, 133, 179, 182, 183, 189, 194–197, 199, 213, 221 Transnational people 23, 26, 123, 124, 134, 139, 151, 165–168, 206, 272, 274, 281–283, 287, 293 Transnational populism 3, 10, 19, 23, 25, 26, 34, 35, 90, 91, 95, 119, 120, 122–125, 129, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140, 150, 152, 161, 162, 166, 168, 169, 171, 197, 272–274, 279, 281–283, 287, 290, 292, 294–296, 305 Transversality 132 Treaty of Rome 59, 60, 135, 260 Troika 126, 131, 153, 154, 161, 179, 182, 185, 188, 189, 288, 289 Tsipras, Alexis 126, 179, 183, 185–188, 195, 289

T

U

Technocracy 154, 161, 254, 255, 259, 261, 263, 312 Temporalization of societal semantics 250

United Nations 25, 95, 272, 284 Utopia 102, 103

Index

V

Varoufakis, Yanis 8, 34, 97, 126, 129, 130, 133, 150–152, 154, 164, 166, 168, 190, 194,

347

196–198, 220, 222, 289, 293, 314 Voting 21, 46, 48, 70, 187