Richard Bellamy is one of the major figures in normative debates about the European Union (EU) and, over the course of more than a decade, has developed a complex theory of democratic legitimacy within it. A Republican Europe of States: Cosmopolitanism, Intergovernmentalism and Democracy in the EU represents the culmination of this work. In it, Bellamy defends in detail his distinctive position, according to which cooperative associations of states like the EU are normatively desirable, but deeper political integration should nonetheless be resisted.
The book’s first part lays out the general theory of “republican intergovernmentalism” that forms the backbone of Bellamy’s account of the EU. Chapter 1 situates the theory within recent theoretical debates around statism and cosmopolitanism. Bellamy endorses a “cosmopolitan morality” on the grounds that, in an interconnected world, we have reasons to regulate the interactions of states “in equitable and fair ways that indicate a cosmopolitan regard for the citizens of different states” (p. 47). Yet he also emphasizes that this moral standpoint “only makes sense to the extent that it is embedded within a statist framework” (p. 51).
As Chapters 2 and 3 explicate, this “cosmopolitan statism” is predicated on the idea that considerations of legitimacy have priority over considerations of justice, because any claim of justice can only be legitimately made within a particular political context: “the identification of and commitment to cosmopolitan norms of justice cannot be separated from the specification of a type of political community that would allow these norms to be debated and decided upon by those to whom they will apply in ways they can regard as legitimate” (p. 53).
Bellamy’s next move is to argue that EU member states already provide the appropriate type of political community for staging and resolving conflicts over justice in a legitimate fashion, possessing as they do a domestic public sphere, a shared language, consolidated political institutions, and so on. Being aware of their status as a part of self-governing communities, moreover, member states’ “peoples” have an interest to be free not only from internal domination (e.g., being subjected to arbitrary decisions within their state) but also from external domination (e.g., being subjected to arbitrary decisions from powerful actors from outside the state). It is hardly surprising that Bellamy concludes therefore that “popular sovereignty presupposes state sovereignty” (p. 72).
In the book’s second part, Bellamy applies his theory to a range of particular institutional problems. In Chapter 4, he proposes that the “democratic disconnect” between the EU level and member states’ peoples can be overcome by “domesticating European politics”—giving domestic electorates more influence over EU-related decisions via national parliaments—and “Europeanizing domestic politics,” thereby “making national electorates and their representatives feel responsible for EU decisions and the impact of their domestic decisions on their European associates” (p. 123). Chapter 5, in turn, argues that EU citizenship should merely supplement, not replace, national citizenship. Bellamy argues that only when EU citizenship is not on a par with national citizenship, yet still secures some basic EU-wide rights (e.g., voting in European Parliament elections outside one’s own country), can “states treat the citizens of other states with equal concern and respect, while preserving their capacity to protect the rights of their citizens in diverse ways” (p. 173). This concern with protecting diversity underpins also the defense of “differentiated integration” in the final chapter, which assigns to member states the right to integrate at different speeds.
Although readers familiar with Bellamy’s prior work certainly will not find much new in the argument presented in A Republican Europe of States, the book still marks a major contribution to ongoing debates about how the EU could be reformed and made more democratic. It contains many appealing proposals (e.g., enhancing the role of national parliaments as a counterweight to executive dominance) and will without doubt be widely read and debated, consolidating Bellamy’s status as a leading voice in the field.
Alas, the book also reproduces some of the shortcomings of Bellamy’s earlier work. One thing that strikes me as particularly troubling is the lack of clarity on how the normative and empirical aspects of his argument relate to each other. Although he explicates his methodological assumptions in the book’s introduction, noting his concern with the “feasibility” of political proposals, his strategy of “mixing utopianism with realism” (p. 15) in the end leaves many questions open.
For example, Bellamy claims that his own “cosmopolitan statist account [of the EU] proves normatively and empirically justified” (p. 55); that is, it can be defended with self-standing normative arguments and does not “depart too far from the concerns and preferences of people in the here and now” to “attain legitimacy” (p. 15). But it is unclear what “too far” means here and how any threshold for such a claim could be established in a nonarbitrary fashion. Nor is it obvious how his account would react to a changing historical context. What if a majority of EU citizens gradually develop preferences that are at odds with Bellamy’s republican intergovernmentalism?
Given that Bellamy is quick to establish “moral obligations” that fall on citizens, one might think that, when push comes to shove, he would say that those citizens who reject his vision for the EU simply err; they fail to see what morality demands of them. But then the question arises how his arguments could ever “attain legitimacy” in the sociological sense of the term, which is his avowed goal. Of course, Bellamy could say that, “in the here and now,” such questions need not concern us, because empirics neatly align with normative proposals. Yet, this would sit uneasily with his theory’s commitment to democratic self-determination, which must also leave room for creativity in developing new political forms (that may well be in tension with presumed moral obligations).
I find another issue troublesome. It seems that Bellamy, like many other contemporary republican thinkers, adopts an excessively idealized view of the nation-state. In his case, this view seems to be informed by nostalgia for “the welfare democracies that emerged in western Europe post-1945,” which he presents as “approximating … a republican regime” that “established a degree of relational equality among citizens with regard not only to the process of making collective decisions but also the substance of the decisions themselves” (p. 11).
This idealized view has dramatically little to do with the reality of most EU member states, however. Far from instantiating “relational equality,” they are marked by rising socioeconomic inequality, mistrust in the political system, and degrees of polarization that undermine citizens’ “incentive to develop only commonly avowable policies and principles that address shareable values and interests or mutually acceptable compromises” (p. 79)— which is one of the conditions that a collective must meet, according to Bellamy, to qualify as a “people.”
Therefore, one wonders whether operating with a more realistic view of nation-states might have led Bellamy to different conclusions about the EU. Moreover, reading Bellamy’s book one gets a sense that the most urgent task facing us is actually the reform of domestic representative democracies, even though it is doubtful that European nation-states can ever again assume the shape of the much-glorified post-1945 republican regimes. Indeed, if we accept Bellamy’s republican conception of nation-states, then it is clearly not so much the EU that is out of sync with normative ideals but national democracies.
