Why All the Fuss over Low EU Voter Turnout?

There’s been a lot of agonizing over the lousy voter turnout projected for the European elections this week.  At first blush, the logic of it seems straightforward: voter turnout is perceived as a sign of democratic legitimacy, the low turnout therefore is taken as proof of a “democratic deficit” in the EU.  After this simple math, what usually follows is a whole lot of finger-pointing (who’s to blame: national leaders for scapegoating the EU, or EU leaders for nerding up Europe ) and of course some dire predictions. (Does this mean the grand historical project of European Union has derailed?  OMG!)

Photo by Geert Schneider

Part of it is probably just the media trying to dial up the drama on an otherwise dull election.  Anyway, who’s to say it’s not perfectly rational for voters to stay home, when they perceive, perhaps correctly, that the stakes in the election are not particularly high?  Is turnout even a reasonable test of the Union’s legitimacy?

Well, maybe not. Certainly, in a democratic system, it is easy to understand the importance of elections as expressions of the popular will, and voting a demonstration of the consent of the governed.  Except, of course, that governments are always twisting the meaning of elections to suit their agenda.  What’s more, in a modern democracy, it’s rare for a leader to be elected by more than 55% of voters; governments are formed all the time against the wishes of more than 45% of the population. Perhaps the true test of legitimacy is not the election itself, but what happens after—whether voters accept the result peaceably by continuing to recognize the state as sovereign.  Turnout may be a decent yardstick for measuring the level of voters’ interest in the outcome of a particular election, but may not be a good measure of a government’s legitimacy.  After all, voter turnout in the U.S. presidential election of 1860 was 81%, the second highest ever; within a year, there was civil war.

What’s more, the EU is not a particularly democratic institution. Supra-democratic is more like it.  The EU parliament is the sole portion of the EU directly elected by European citizens, and it comprises only one half of the legislative branch. In fact, as Olivier Ferrand recently pointed out in Le Monde, the EU’s “un-democracy” is baked into the cake.

This democratic deficit is a legacy of European construction. Faced with the impossibility of a “Federal Revolution” ex nihilo, the founders, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, had a stroke of genius, a European design in two stages: the European Economic Community as the first step towards creating de facto solidarity, and mutual trust, before one day moving a second step towards a federal Europe. They created the technical Europe first, like the airlock before the political Europe to come.

In its current form, the bulk of the EU’s governing body consists of appointees and representatives of the national governments. There’s no consensus on exactly what form of government the EU happens to be, because it is wholly without precedent.  Never have a group of nations attempted the gradual transfer of sovereignty into a shared, over-arching structure.  And until the Lisbon treaty — another baby step toward statehood — is adopted, the whole edifice will remain frozen, mid-metamorphosis, something less than a state but more than a mere international organization.

Photo by Alain Alele

For now, it is national governments, and not voters, who remain the primary constituents of the EU.  Moreover, it is the member states that confer legitimacy on the EU, by soldiering on, and ratifying Lisbon, often despite its occasional popular rejection.  Critics who decry the “democratic deficit” are mostly tackling a straw man.  What they are really criticizing is a structural legacy of an incomplete project.  It is telling, for example, that both critics of integration and advocates of more rapid integration share the same gripe about the EU’s dearth of democracy.  Of course they do; they are both dissatisfied with the EU as it currently stands.

It’s worth noting that for all the kvetching about voter apathy, most explanations for it are really just variations on the same two themes. Voters, it’s been argued, either don’t see the point in voting (because they are more concerned with the recession and keeping their jobs, and don’t perceive the EU affecting the economy) or don’t get the point of why they should vote (since most of what happens in Brussels seems highly technical and totally tedious).  The problem, to paraphrase General “Buck” Turgidson, is that the EU has an “efficacy gap” and a “relevancy gap.’  Both of these gaps will eventually narrow.  Greater transparency of the executive, a more powerful elected parliament, and clearer delineations between national and European domains — all features of Lisbon — may enhance voters’ impression of the EU’s influence and close the efficacy gap.  This, in turn, may help foster the development of a real European party politics.  The job of political parties is to translate abstruse legislation into the kind of values-based language that voters can relate to — that could help close the relevancy gap.

Whatever happens, EU integration will remain an enormous undertaking for a long time. Euro-integrationists eager for more democracy may rue the day when a true oppositional politics arrives at the EU parliament, and look back wistfully on the days when Brussels was a place where eggheads reigned and compromise was more easily achieved.