Research Paper
Hans Kundnani
Europe Programme | March 2020
The Future of Democracy
in Europe
Technology and the Evolution
of Representation
1 | Chatham House
Contents
	Summary	 2
1	Introduction	 3
2	 What Crisis of Liberal Democracy?	 5
3	 The Role of Technology	 11
4	 Democratic Institutions and Processes in Europe	 17
5	 A New Age of Party Democracy?	 24
6	 Beyond Representative Democracy?	 30
7	Conclusion	 37
	 About the Project	 40
	 About the Author	 41
	Acknowledgments	 42
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Summary
•	 There is a widespread sense that liberal democracy is in crisis, but little consensus exists
on the specific nature and causes of the crisis. In particular, there are three prisms through
which the crisis is usually seen: the rise of ‘populism’, ‘democratic deconsolidation’, and
a ‘hollowing out’ of democracy. Each reflects normative assumptions about democracy.
•	 The exact role of digital technology in the crisis is disputed. Despite the widely held perception
that social media is undermining democracy, the evidence for this is limited. Over the longer
term, the further development of digital technology could undermine the fundamental
preconditions for democracy – though the pace and breadth of technological change make
predictions about its future impact difficult.
•	 Democracy functions in different ways in different European countries, with political
systems on the continent ranging from ‘majoritarian democracies’ such as the UK to ‘consensual
democracies’ such as Belgium and Switzerland. However, no type seems to be immune from the
crisis. The political systems of EU member states also interact in diverse ways with the EU’s own
structure, which is problematic for representative democracy as conventionally understood,
but difficult to reform.
•	 Political parties, central to the model of representative democracy that emerged in the
late 18th century, have long seemed to be in decline. Recently there have been some signs
of a reversal of this trend, with the emergence of parties that have used digital technology
in innovative ways to reconnect with citizens. Traditional parties can learn from these new
‘digital parties’.
•	 Recent years have also seen a proliferation of experiments in direct and deliberative democracy.
There is a need for more experimentation in these alternative forms of democracy, and for
further evaluation of how they can be integrated into the existing institutions and processes
of representative democracy at the local, regional, national and EU levels.
•	 We should not think of democracy in a static way – that is, as a system that can be perfected
once and for all and then simply maintained and defended against threats. Democracy has
continually evolved and now needs to evolve further. The solution to the crisis will not be to
attempt to limit democracy in response to pressure from ‘populism’ but to deepen it further
as part of a ‘democratization of democracy’.
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3 | Chatham House
1. Introduction
There is a widespread sense that liberal democracy is in crisis, and that the rapid development and
proliferation of digital technology has something to do with it. But how exactly to understand the
crisis, and the role of technology in it, is far from clear. Many see digital technology as an important
driver of the crisis, and perhaps even as its main driver. Others – and not just technology companies
and their cheerleaders – see digital technology as at least part of the solution.
This research paper focuses on the relationship between democracy and digital technology in Europe.1
To the extent that perceptions of a crisis in liberal democracy in Europe can be confirmed, the paper
investigates the nature of the problem and its causes, and asks what part, if any, digital technology
plays in it.2
In particular, it explores arguments that the development and prevalence of digital
technology are undermining democracy in Europe. The paper further considers whether, and how,
the crisis might be addressed and democracy revitalized – and how digital technology might help
in this revitalization.
Until recently, fundamental questions around the state of democracy in Europe or the US received
relatively little attention in the foreign policy debate. Where Western foreign policy think-tanks
focused on democracy at all, they tended to consider how it could be promoted and supported
elsewhere in the world. In the last few years – and in particular since the decision by the British people
to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016 – there has
been a proliferation of projects that seek to ‘defend’, ‘protect’ or ‘secure’ democracy within Europe
and the US. But these projects tend to focus on ‘foreign interference’ in Western democracies – and in
particular on the use of digital technology by authoritarian states such as China and Russia to ‘polarize
and pervert the politics of democratic societies’, as one Washington, DC-based think-tank puts it.3
In the last few years – and in particular since the decision by the British people
to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president
in 2016 – there has been a proliferation of projects that seek to ‘defend’, ‘protect’
or ‘secure’ democracy within Europe and the US.
It is understandable that foreign policy think-tanks should focus on this external aspect of the crisis
of liberal democracy in Europe and the US. But doing so inevitably tends to suggest that the crisis is
driven primarily by external actors. It ignores the internal problems with the way democracy functions
and has evolved in the past few decades. This research paper takes a different approach, starting from
the assumption that any crisis of liberal democracy is driven primarily by internal forces (though,
1
In this research paper, ‘Europe’ refers to the whole of the continent as a geographic space rather than to the European Union or its member
states, but does not include Russia and Turkey.
2
The analysis – particularly in Chapter 2 – partly draws on and develops material published by the author during the research project that
informed this paper. See Kundnani, H. (2018), ‘Digital technology and the crisis of liberal democracy’, Commission on Democracy and Technology
in Europe, 25 September 2018, https://demtech.chathamhouse.org/digital-technology-and-the-crisis-of-liberal-democracy/?.
3
Centre for a New American Security (undated), ‘Countering High-Tech Illiberalism’, https://www.cnas.org/countering-high-tech-illiberalism.
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4 | Chatham House
of course, external actors may seek to exploit the situation). It examines these drivers and explores
how the challenges might ultimately be solved by making democracy in Europe more responsive
to citizens – in part through the use of digital technology.
Democracy is notoriously difficult to define beyond the basic idea of popular sovereignty – or, in
the famous formulation that President Abraham Lincoln used in the Gettysburg Address in 1863,
‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’. There have of course been multiple forms
of democracy in different historical periods and in different parts of the world. For the purposes of
this paper, the only assumption about the form that democracy should take in Europe is that it must
be liberal democracy: in other words, a system of popular sovereignty together with guaranteed
basic rights, including freedom of association and expression and checks and balances to prevent
the emergence of a ‘tyranny of the majority’.
Although the terms ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘representative democracy’ are often used
interchangeably, they are actually quite distinct concepts. It is possible, for example, to imagine
a more direct democracy that would also be liberal in the sense of guaranteeing basic rights. This
paper does not assume that representative democracy, which emerged as the dominant form of
democracy in Europe and North America in the late 18th century, should forever remain the form
that democracy takes in Europe. In fact, one way of understanding the current crisis is as a crisis of
the representative model, which may no longer satisfy European citizens. This paper explores, among
other things, some ways in which it might be possible to move beyond representative democracy
and, in doing so, increase rather than reduce the quality of democracy in Europe.
The paper is structured as follows. Chapter 2 explores three different prisms through which the
crisis of liberal democracy in Europe can be understood: ‘populism’, ‘democratic deconsolidation’
and a ‘hollowing out’ of democracy. Chapter 3 examines several different ways in which the
development of technology may already be impacting, and may in future impact, democracy in
Europe. Chapter 4 examines in detail how democracy currently works in Europe, and in particular
the complex picture of democratic institutions and processes across the continent. Chapter 5 assesses
the potential for a revitalization of political parties, which have been central to the model of
representative democracy to date. Chapter 6 explores experiments in participatory democracy
that could complement or ultimately even replace representative democracy.
Chapter 7 draws some conclusions. However, as the chapters preceding it will attempt to show,
the crisis of liberal democracy and the development of digital technology are both hugely complex
subjects about which there is much uncertainty. This is despite the tendency by many who write
about them to suggest there are simple answers. Defining the relationship between the crisis of liberal
democracy and digital technology is extremely difficult. Rather than reaching premature conclusions,
this paper aims to establish a conceptual framework for further research: to map the terrain, as it
were. It argues that, while the development of digital technology is a factor in the crisis of liberal
democracy in Europe, it is not, as some analysts suggest, the main driver of the crisis and may
even ultimately help to solve the crisis.
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5 | Chatham House
2. What Crisis of Liberal Democracy?
A number of indicators point to a state of dysfunction in democracy in Europe. Satisfaction with
democracy has been declining.4
The party system has changed dramatically with the rise of radical
political parties, which has increased the overall number of parties in many European legislatures and
may diminish the effectiveness and ideological coherence of governments. Over the past few decades,
there has been a general decline in voter turnout in many European countries, particularly among
groups such as younger or less well-educated voters. There has also been a decline in the membership of
political parties – and a rise in electoral volatility as voters have become more likely to change affiliation.
As a result of these trends, some fear that Europe may be part of a worldwide ‘democratic recession’.5
However, it is worth remembering that the perception of a crisis of democracy has existed for
as long as democracy itself. As David Runciman puts it, ‘the onward march of democracy has been
accompanied by a constant drumbeat of intellectual anxiety’.6
One of the strengths of democracies
seems to be their ability to reform and renew themselves – indeed, crises can be the catalyst for such
reform and renewal. In these moments, it can be quite difficult to distinguish a democracy that is
working well from one that is working badly. Advanced democracies do currently seem to be going
through just such a moment. Yet if there is a crisis in at least this sense, there is little consensus about
its causes and how to solve it. This chapter discusses three distinct ways of interpreting the situation.
Populism
Perhaps the most prevalent prism through which the crisis is often seen is the concept of
‘populism’. At a famous conference on populism at the London School of Economics and Political
Science in May 1967, Richard Hofstadter gave a talk entitled ‘Everyone is talking about populism
but no one can define it’.7
Although political scientists such as Cas Mudde and Jan-Werner Müller
have since come up with precise definitions, there is still no shared definition.8
Moreover, academic
definitions often exclude some of the figures, movements and parties, particularly on the left,
that are routinely described as populist in policy debates. In practice, populism is often used as
a ‘label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like’,
as Francis Fukuyama put it.9
4
See Foa, R. S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A. and Williams, R. (2020), Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020, Centre for the Future
of Democracy, January 2020, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/DemocracyReport2020.pdf.
5
Diamond, L. (2015), ‘Facing up to the Democratic Recession’, Journal of Democracy, January 2015, pp. 141–55,
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Diamond-26-1_0.pdf.
6
Runciman, D. (2013), The Confidence Trap. A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present, New Haven: Yale University
Press, p. xii. On the history of democracy as a ‘history of crisis’, see also Nolte, P. (2012), Was ist Demokratie? Geschichte und Gegenwart
[What is Democracy? Past and Present], Munich: C. H. Beck, pp. 19–20.
7
An account of the conference can be found in Berlin, I. et al. (1968), ‘To Define Populism’, Government and Opposition, Volume 3, Number 2,
April 1968, pp. 137–79. The paper was subsequently published under a different title. See Hofstadter, R. (1969), ‘North America’, in Ionescu, G.
and Gellner, E. (1969), Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 16–18.
8
Mudde, C. (2004), ‘The Populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition, 2004, Vol. 39 (4), pp. 542–63; and Müller, J.-W. (2016),
What is Populism?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
9
Fukuyama, F. (2016), ‘American Political Decay or Renewal?’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2016, pp. 58–68, here p. 68.
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6 | Chatham House
In the past few years, the concept has been applied to an extraordinary range of figures, movements
and parties in Europe – and even, in the case of Brexit, to a decision. The effect of this inflationary use
of the term has been to obscure the heterogeneity of populism.10
Analysts have tended to emphasize
the similarities rather than differences between the diverse figures, movements and parties,
whether on the left or right, that are sometimes described as populist. This has prompted misleading
generalizations about what such actors and/or organizations stand for. For example, scholars
of populism and other analysts who think of the crisis of liberal democracy in terms of populism
often talk about a generic ‘populist playbook’ as if all populists operated on the basis of identical
political logic.
The complexity and heterogeneity of populism mean that it is difficult
to generalize about its implications for democracy in Europe.
Analysis of the causes of populism has been divided between explanations that focus on cultural
factors and those that emphasize economic factors. Cultural factors include opposition to changes
in values since the 1960s, anger about immigration, and racism and Islamophobia. Economic factors
include wage stagnation, the loss of manufacturing jobs, growing inequality, and economic insecurity
or ‘precariousness’. Yet in no national or regional context can support for populist figures, movements
or parties simply be reduced to either set of factors, though their relative weight may differ from one
context to the next. Instead, populism is a function of a complex interaction between both sets of
factors – as well other factors such as digital technology – that we are only beginning to understand.
The complexity and heterogeneity of populism mean that it is difficult to generalize about its
implications for democracy in Europe. So-called populists are often seen as a threat to liberal
democracy. But left-wing parties that are described as populist are unlikely to restrict minority
rights, for example, in the way that many fear far-right parties will. Many left-wing parties, such as
Spain’s Podemos, emerged out of protest movements against austerity and actually stand for a radical
deepening of democracy. However, because some of the leaders of parties such as Podemos admire
South American socialist leaders like the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, some observers
fear that, if elected into government, they would seek to abolish checks and balances and consolidate
power in their own hands. Some argue that Syriza sought to do this while it was in power in Greece
between 2015 and 2019.
Even to describe all right-wing populists as straightforwardly ‘anti-democratic’ is too simple. In
Germany, for example, politicians and media outlets often characterize the far-right Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD) as demokratiefeindlich, or ‘hostile to democracy’, and refer to the other parties
as ‘democratic forces’ by contrast. But in some ways the AfD has revitalized democracy in Germany:
1.2 million of the 5.9 million people who voted for it in the 2017 general election were previously nonvoters.
As a result, the AfD helped raise turnout from 72 per cent in 2013 to 77 per cent in 2017. Other
populist parties in Europe, including those on the far right, have had a similar effect in reintegrating
alienated voters into the democratic process. Thus, however abhorrent their views may be, there
is nevertheless, as Yascha Mounk puts it, ‘something democratic about the energy that propels
‘populist’ parties’.11
10
On the heterogeneity of populism, see Manow, P. (2018), Die politische Ökonomie des Populismus [The political economy of populism],
Berlin: Suhrkamp.
11
Mounk, Y. (2018), The People vs. Democracy. Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 52.
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7 | Chatham House
Seeking a more precise definition, many analysts have adopted the term ‘illiberal democracy’ in
talking about populism in Europe. The concept was first used by Fareed Zakaria in 1997 to describe
non-Western democracies whose elected governments were ‘routinely ignoring constitutional
limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms’.12
Many fear that
left-wing and right-wing populists in Europe could do the same, though it is not clear whether
this view interprets illiberal democracy as a stable model or simply as a stage on the way towards
authoritarianism. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has explicitly embraced the idea
of ‘illiberal democracy’.13
But analysts like Jan-Werner Müller argue that it should be rejected
altogether because it allows figures such as Orbán to claim democratic legitimacy.14
Democratic deconsolidation
A second way to understand the crisis is through the concept of ‘democratic deconsolidation’ –
that is, the transition of a democracy into an authoritarian state. Political scientists used to believe
that a democracy was irreversibly consolidated once power had changed hands peacefully several
times, as this signalled it would no longer revert to authoritarianism. Democratic consolidation was
widely believed to be closely linked to economic development – no established democracy with gross
domestic product (GDP) per capita over about $14,000 in today’s terms had ever collapsed – and was
thus understood as part of the process of a state’s modernization.15
This made democracy in Europe
seem extremely stable. But in recent years, this confidence has been challenged.
Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk have drawn attention to data suggesting that, across the West,
the percentage of people who say it is ‘essential’ to live in a democracy has plummeted.16
People
have become ‘more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that
anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian
alternatives’.17
In particular, Foa and Mounk identify a ‘democratic disconnect’ among millennials
(those born after 1980) that cannot be attributed to an ‘age’ rather than ‘cohort’ effect – that is, they
are not likely to change their views of democracy over time. There is no reason to think that this
generation will become more committed to democracy as its members get older.
These findings are a matter of some dispute, however. Some have argued that overall support for
democracy and for non-democratic alternatives has not changed much in the past two decades.
In particular, millennials in Western democracies are not very different in their views of political
systems than young people in the mid-1990s were.18
Others have argued that young people are
12
Zakaria, F. (1997), ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 1997, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1997-11-01/
rise-illiberal-democracy.
13
Website of the Hungarian Government (2014), ‘Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the 25th Bálványos Summer Free University and
Student Camp’, 30 July 2014, https://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-
speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp.
14
See, for example, Müller, J.-W. (2016), ‘The Problem with “Illiberal Democracy”’, Project Syndicate, 21 January 2016,
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-problem-with-illiberal-democracy-by-jan-werner-mueller-2016-01; and Müller, J.-W.
(2018), ‘“Democracy” Still Matters’, New York Times, 5 April 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/opinion/hungary-viktor-
orban-populism.html.
15
Przeworski, A. and Papaterra, F. (1997), ‘Modernization: Theories and Facts’, World Politics, Volume 49, Issue 2, pp. 155–83. See also Mounk
(2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 4.
16
Foa, R. S. and Mounk, Y. (2016), ‘The Democratic Disconnect’, Journal of Democracy, July 2016, pp. 5–17, http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/
sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf; and Foa, R. S. and Mounk, Y. (2017), ‘The Signs of Deconsolidation’, Journal of Democracy, January
2017, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/02_28.1_Foa-Mounk-pp-5-15.pdf.
17
Foa and Mounk (2016), ‘The Democratic Disconnect’, p. 7.
18
Voeten, E. (2017), ‘Are people really turning away from democracy?’, Journal of Democracy, 28 April 2017, https://www.journalofdemocracy.
org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Journal-of-Democracy-Web-Exchange-Voeten_0.pdf.
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8 | Chatham House
actually more enthusiastic about democracy than older people are.19
There is also a lack of clarity
about the relationship between democratic deconsolidation and populism. Many assume that those
less committed to democracy might tend to vote for populist figures and parties. But some have also
suggested that centrists are actually more hostile to democracy than populists are.20
Whatever the truth about attitudes to democracy in Western Europe, democratic deconsolidation
or ‘backsliding’ is already a reality in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, Hungary and Poland
seem to be deconsolidating as liberal democracies. If Hungary should now be categorized as an
autocracy, as many analysts argue, it has already disproved the idea that democracies with per capita
GDP over about $14,000 in today’s terms can been seen as safe.21
Not all of the populists in Europe
should be seen as identical to Orbán, of course. But whether or not democracies elsewhere in Europe
are also likely to deconsolidate, developments in Central Europe suggest that this is at least possible.
In part because it is unclear who exactly is becoming more hostile to democracy, the causes of
democratic deconsolidation are even less clear than the causes of populism. If there is a growing
indifference towards democracy, it may be related in part to the development of technology –
particularly for young people who, for example, are used to the immediacy of social media
(see Chapter 3). To some extent, it also may be a function of the political systems of particular
European countries or of ‘Europeanization’ (see Chapter 4). But it may also be a response to the
way that the quality of democracy has deteriorated, which brings us to another way of thinking
about the current crisis.
A hollowed-out democracy
A third way of thinking about the crisis of liberal democracy is the idea that, throughout the
West, democracy has been gradually hollowed out over several decades. Although, according to
this argument, democracy continues to function in formal terms, it has become increasingly empty –
and is now what the British sociologist Colin Crouch called ‘post-democracy’.22
Crouch’s version
of this argument focuses on the rise in the power of corporations to influence decisions that were
previously taken by national governments in response to popular pressure. This version of the idea
of post-democracy is closely linked to debates about neoliberalism.23
Other versions of the argument
emphasize that the phenomenon of ‘hyper-globalization’ described by Dani Rodrik has hollowed
out democratic decision-making at the national level.24
Whatever the explanation, it seems that there is an increasing disconnect between citizens and
government. In an influential book published in 2013, the Irish political scientist Peter Mair argued
that a ‘void’ had emerged as the political class had abandoned its representative function and
retreated into the institutions of the state, and as citizens had retreated into apathy. In particular,
the decline in membership of political parties and increase in political volatility showed that parties
19
Zilinsky, J. (2019), ‘Democratic deconsolidation revisited: Young Europeans are not dissatisfied with democracy’, Research and Politics,
January–March 2019, pp. 1–7.
20
Adler, D. (2018), ‘Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists’, New York Times, 23 May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html.
21
Mounk, Y. (2018), ‘Hungary’s Election Was a Milestone in the Decline of Democracy’, Slate, 9 April 2018, https://slate.com/news-and-
politics/2018/04/the-re-election-of-hungarys-authoritarian-prime-minister-disproves-everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-democracy.html.
Mounk calls Hungary ‘a dictatorship with a thin electoral veneer’.
22
Crouch, C. (2004), Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity.
23
See Crouch, C. (2011), The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, Cambridge: Polity.
24
Rodrik, R. (2011), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy, New York and London: W. W. Norton.
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9 | Chatham House
no longer functioned as vehicles of social interests that mediated between citizens and government.
‘The zone of engagement – the traditional world of party democracy where citizens interacted with
and felt a sense of attachment to their political leaders – is being evacuated,’ Mair wrote.25
One of the key empirical indicators on which Mair’s argument was based was the apparently
chronic decline in turnout in elections throughout Europe. For much of the post-war period, voter
turnout had remained relatively stable. However, from the 1990s onwards, turnout began to fall
sharply everywhere in Europe. In this sense, the hollowing out of democracy is closely related to
the idea of democratic deconsolidation, which also focuses on the increasing indifference of voters
towards democracy. But hollowing out goes further by explaining this indifference as a somewhat
understandable response to a structural failure of liberal democracy in Europe.
Similarly, the idea of a hollowing out of democracy reframes populism as a symptom rather than
a cause of the crisis of liberal democracy. Some analysts see ‘post-democratic’ tendencies as a driver
of the rise of populism and ‘illiberal democracy’. For example, Cas Mudde writes that ‘populism is an
illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism’.26
If one understands populism in this way,
it also changes the extent to which one views it as a threat to democracy. In fact, in some cases it may
be less an attack on democracy than a corrective. The key question is how centre-left and centre-right
parties respond to populism as defined in this way – in particular, whether they are able to reconnect
with alienated voters.27
The idea of a hollowing out of democracy reframes populism as a symptom
rather than a cause of the crisis of liberal democracy.
Another interesting version of this argument emphasizes the increasingly technocratic nature
of governance – again often as a function of hyper-globalization. In this analysis, populism is seen
as a kind of complement to, or in a dialectical relationship with, technocracy.28
This is particularly
relevant within the EU, which is perhaps the ultimate experiment in technocratic governance. It is
therefore unsurprising that populists should emerge to challenge technocracy and seek to restore
a sense of popular control. In this context, debates about democracy in the EU can be understood
as an expression of a European version of the increasing tension between ‘responsive’ and ‘responsible’
governance identified by Mair.29
Ideological differences
Although each of these three paradigms explains the crisis in a different way, and there are some
tensions between them, there is also some overlap. In particular, the idea of a hollowing out of
democracy can be seen as a way to explain populism and democratic deconsolidation. The different
analyses also share some elements: in particular, many of those analysts who see the crisis,
25
Mair, P. (2013), Ruling the Void. The Hollowing of Western Democracy, London: Verso, p. 16.
26
Mudde, C. (2015), ‘The Problem with Populism’, Guardian, 17 February 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/17/
problem-populism-syriza-podemos-dark-side-europe.
27
Berman, S. (2016), ‘Populism is not fascism’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2016-10-17/populism-not-fascism.
28
See, for example, Bickerton, C. and Accetti, C. I. (2017), ‘Populism and technocracy: opposites or complements?’, Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy, 20:2, 2017, pp. 186–206.
29
Mair, P. (2009), Representative versus Responsible Government, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Working Paper 09/8,
September 2009, http://www.mpifg.de/pu/workpap/wp09-8.pdf. The title of the paper is somewhat misleading: the crucial distinction Mair
makes in it is between ‘responsive’ (rather than ‘representative’) and ‘responsible’ government.
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respectively, in terms of populism or a hollowing out of democracy share the view that there is
something fundamentally problematic about the structure of the EU itself, whether because the bloc
is too technocratic or because it is an example of ‘undemocratic liberalism’. Chapter 4 further explores
the role of the EU in the crisis of liberal democracy in Europe.
Each of the three paradigms also reflects different normative assumptions about how liberal
democracy ought ideally to function. In particular, each differs on the extent and kind of polarization
that is good for democracy. Those who understand the crisis through the prism of populism tend
to see polarization in rather simple and negative terms. But those who see the crisis through
the prism of ‘hollowing out’ distinguish more clearly between polarization on economic issues
and on cultural ones, and argue that there has not been enough polarization on economic issues
in the past few decades – a deficit that in turn has shifted political debate, and polarization,
to more toxic cultural issues.
There is no apolitical or technocratic way to understand the crisis –
or, rather, attempts to do so themselves reflect centrist assumptions
about liberal democracy.
These normative differences on the question of polarization correspond to some extent to differences
between more adversarial and more consensual political cultures in Europe, which, as Chapter 4 will
show, are reflected in the variety of democratic institutions and processes present in different
European countries. But they also reflect ideological differences. Put simply, centrists tend to believe
in consensus and see polarization as a threat to democracy, while those further on the left or right
of the political spectrum tend to see it as necessary – or even as the essence of democratic politics.
These differences illustrate that there is no apolitical or technocratic way to understand the crisis –
or, rather, that attempts to do so themselves reflect centrist assumptions about liberal democracy.
The question of the role of technology in the crisis, on which the next chapter focuses, adds yet
another layer of complexity. It is not just that there is so much uncertainty about the effect that digital
technology is having on democracy at present or will have in future. Much of what is written about
the role of technology in the crisis of liberal democracy is flawed because it does not make explicit its
assumptions about the nature of the crisis, or about how liberal democracy ought to function. In order
to understand exactly the role of technology in the crisis of liberal democracy, one needs to connect
technological developments with the difficult political questions discussed in this chapter about
how the crisis itself can be understood.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
11 | Chatham House
3. The Role of Technology
During the past decade there has been a remarkable shift in how the relationship between
democracy and technology is perceived. In 2010, there was much discussion of what Larry Diamond,
the editor of the Journal of Democracy, called ‘liberation technology’.30
New digital tools, he wrote,
would empower citizens to ‘report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize protest,
monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the horizons of
freedom’. In short, digital technology was seen as being on the side of democracy, which it would
help consolidate and deepen. The role of social media in the Arab Spring a year later seemed
to confirm this view of digital technology as a liberating force.31
In recent years, however, this optimism has given way to pessimism as utopian thinking about
digital technology has been replaced by dystopian thinking. In particular since the decision by the
British people to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, technology
has become widely seen as a threat to democracy. Social media is now often described as a vehicle for
disinformation rather than as a way to democratize information and expose the truth. It is also often
seen as a factor in the rise of populism and as a cause of democratic deconsolidation. In short, digital
technology is now widely seen as a driver of the crisis of liberal democracy.
This chapter explores whether this is really true. It examines various aspects and forms of digital
technology that are currently having, or may in future have, an impact on democracy in Europe.
Much of the debate about the role of digital technology in the current crisis focuses on the impact
of social media. But it is widely accepted that the forms of digital technology that may already be
having an impact on democracy in Europe are merely the beginning of a bigger revolution that could
transform society in even more dramatic ways in the medium and long term – particularly through
artificial intelligence (AI). The chapter therefore also examines ways in which other forms of digital
technology could have an impact on democracy in Europe in the future, though this analysis is
inevitably somewhat speculative.
Social media and the current crisis
Although the idea of ‘liberation technology’ was based mainly on the effect that social media
seemed to be having in authoritarian states, it was also hoped that social media would act as a positive
force in consolidated democracies by informing and engaging citizens. In particular, it was hoped
that social media would ‘enable greater access to information, facilitate collective organizing, and
empower civil society’.32
Social media has indeed enabled much greater participation in politics,
particularly by young people.33
In that sense, it has fulfilled its promise. But at the same time,
30
Diamond, L. (2010), ‘Liberation Technology’, Journal of Democracy, Volume 21, Number 3, July 2010, pp. 69–83,
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Diamond-21-3.pdf.
31
The term ‘social media’ is used in this paper as shorthand for all kinds of internet-based platforms that allow users to share content, including
shared-news websites, photo- and video-sharing applications and websites, and closed messaging applications.
32
Deibert, R. (2019), ‘The Road to Digital Unfreedom: Three Painful Truths About Social Media’, Journal of Democracy, Volume 30, Number 1,
January 2019, pp. 25–39, here p. 25, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-road-to-digital-unfreedom-three-painful-truths-
about-social-media/.
33
See Boulianne, S. and Theocharis, Y. (2018), ‘Young People, Digital Media, and Engagement: A Meta-Analysis of Research’, Social Science
Computer Review, 5 December 2018.
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12 | Chatham House
the way that social media undermines the ability of mainstream media organizations to control the
flow of ideas and information – which in the early 2010s was identified as a positive change – is now
widely seen as a problem.
In particular, it is widely believed that social media has contributed to the emergence of a ‘posttruth’
politics. It is argued that social media ‘increases volume and speed of information flow and
the relative volume of opinion over fact’ and thus leads to what has been called ‘truth decay’.34
Social media ‘makes it possible for disinformation and misleading information to spread quickly and
widely – and thus feeds Truth Decay by enabling the blurring of the line between information and
fact and magnifying the relative volume and effect of opinions and beliefs over objective facts’.35
In short, social media is corroding political discourse. But the danger with such arguments is that
they idealize an imaginary past in which ‘democracy and factual knowledge were uncontested’.36
It is also frequently claimed that social media is creating polarization. According to Jamie Bartlett,
‘information overload and connectivity has encouraged a divisive form of emotional tribal politics in
which loyalty to the group and anger outrank reason and compromise’.37
This leads to the formation
of ‘tribes’ who share a sense of struggle and grievance and leaders who are unable to reach the kind of
compromises necessary to the functioning of liberal democracy. However, though these arguments
about social media polarization have become widely accepted, they are based on limited evidence.38
Moreover, they are based on the assumption that polarization in politics is itself a problem. However,
as discussed in the previous chapter, some argue that in some ways there has not been enough
polarization in our politics in the past few decades.
Much commentary has also focused on social media’s use of algorithms to confirm user beliefs
and biases and thus create ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’.39
For example, Bartlett writes that the
‘splintering of established mainstream news has allowed people to personalize their news sources
in ways that play to their pre-existing biases’.40
Some research has concluded that users are more
inclined to share content or opinions they agree with, which creates ‘selective exposure’.41
But more
recent research challenges the idea of echo chambers and argues that social media actually increases
exposure to alternative views.42
Some even argue that ‘the “echo chambers” narrative’ has itself
been ‘amplified and distorted in a kind of echo chamber effect’.43
34
Kavanagh, J. and Rich, M. D. (2018), Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life,
Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, pp. 110–21.
35
Ibid., p. 113.
36
Müller, J.-W. (2019), ‘The Pre-History of Post-Truth’, Project Syndicate, 26 April 2019, https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/the-pre-
history-of-post-truth-by-jan-werner-mueller-2019-04.
37
Bartlett, J. (2018), The People vs. Tech. How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It), London: Ebury, Kindle edition,
location 398–401.
38
Some data suggest that ‘affective polarization’ has actually decreased in some European countries in recent decades, including in Germany,
Norway, Sweden and the UK. See Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M. and Shapiro, J. (2020), ‘Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization’, National
Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 26669, January 2020, https://www.nber.org/papers/w26669#fromrss.
39
The term ‘filter bubble’ was first used by Eli Pariser. See Pariser, E. (2012), The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What
We Read and How We Think, New York: Penguin. The term ‘echo chamber’ was first used by Cass Sunstein. See Sunstein, C. (2001), Republic.com,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
40
Bartlett (2018), The People vs. Tech, location 444.
41
Kelly Garrett, R. (2009), ‘Echo Chambers Online?: Politically Motivated Selective Exposure among Internet News Users’, Journal of ComputerMediated
Communication, Volume 14, Issue 2, January 2009, pp. 265–85.
42
Blank, G. and Dubois, E. (2019), ‘The myth of the echo chamber’, Oxford Internet Institute, 9 March 2018, https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/blog/
the-myth-of-the-echo-chamber/; Blank, G. and Dubois, E. (2018), ‘The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and
diverse media’, Information, Communication and Society, Volume 21, Issue 5, pp. 729–45; and Flaxman, S., Goel, S. and Rao, J. M. (2016), ‘Filter
Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 80, Special Issue, January 2016, pp. 298–320.
43
Guess, A., Lyons, B., Nyhan, B. and Reifler, J. (2018), Avoiding the echo chamber about echo chambers: Why selective exposure to like-minded
political news is less prevalent than you think, Miami: Knight Foundation, https://kf-site-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media_elements/
files/000/000/133/original/Topos_KF_White-Paper_Nyhan_V1.pdf.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
13 | Chatham House
Whether or not social media corrodes political discourse, many see it as empowering particular
political actors – i.e. social media changes the balance of forces within democracy rather than directly
undermining it. In particular, social media is widely seen as having empowered populists, who, it is
claimed, are particularly ‘adept at using social media to amplify their message, recruit and organise’.44
Yet there is little evidence, for example, that social media helped Trump win the presidential election
in 2016.45
Moreover, a wide range of other figures, movements and parties – such as ‘Black Lives
Matter’ in the US – have successfully used social media in much the same way. In other words,
it is far from clear that social media particularly benefits populists more than other actors.
What may emerge from this era of online collective action is a ‘chaotic,
turbulent pluralism’.
A more persuasive argument is that the effect of social media is to empower all kinds of outsiders
rather than populists as such. Mounk argues that social media closes the technological gap between
insiders and outsiders and thus reduces the advantage that elites previously had in shaping political
discourse. Thus social media favours change over the status quo, and the forces of instability over
the forces of order. ‘In empowering outsiders, digital technology destabilizes governing elites all over
the world and speeds up the pace of change,’ he writes.46
Yet even this conclusion may be premature.
After all, authoritarian governments are also increasingly using social media to increase social control
and maintain ‘stability’. In particular, China is working with social media companies to develop its
social credit system. Authoritarian governments may yet turn out to be more successful in their
use of social media than those who seek to overthrow them.
A different way of thinking about the effect of social media is in terms of increased political
turbulence. A group of four academics (two political scientists, a physicist and a computer scientist)
have shown how social media ‘reshape the context in which citizens operate and influence their
decisions about whether to participate politically’.47
What may emerge from this era of online
collective action is a ‘chaotic, turbulent pluralism’.48
Social media enables citizens to mobilize more
quickly than before – though it is difficult to predict how and when this will happen. Moreover, the
movements that emerge from this activity are often leaderless and unsustainable.49
In short, the only
thing we can say about social media with any certainty is that it increases uncertainty in politics.
Another critique of social media is that it is contributing to democratic deconsolidation. According
to this view, people may be becoming impatient with democracy because it is too ‘analogue’. As Mounk
writes: ‘The daily experience of liking and sharing posts on social media may habituate users to
a simulated form of direct democracy that makes the existing institutions of representative democracy
appear intolerably outmoded.’50
But if technology has in this sense contributed to this crisis of liberal
democracy, it may also have a role in enabling its reconsolidation. For example, there has been much
44
Bartlett, J., Birdwell, J. and Littler, M. (2011), The New Face of Digital Populism, London: Demos, p. 15, https://demosuk.wpengine.com/files/
Demos_OSIPOP_Book-web_03.pdf?1320601634.
45
Sides, J., Tesler, M. and Vavreck, L. (2018), Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, p. 194. See also Groshek, J. and Koc-Michalska, K. (2018), ‘Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles,
and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign’, Information Communication and Society, Volume 20,
Issue 9, pp. 1–19.
46
Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 149.
47
Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S. and Yasseri, T. (2016), Political Turbulence: How social media shape collective action, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, p. 11.
48
Ibid., p. 32.
49
Ibid.
50
Mounk, Y. (2018), ‘Can Liberal Democracy Survive Social Media?’, New York Review of Books, 30 April 2018.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
14 | Chatham House
discussion of the potential of digital technology to facilitate democratic participation. Some have
even seen the possibility of using it to scale up and update the kind of direct democracy that existed
in ancient Athens – in effect creating a kind of ‘virtual agora’.51
This possibility is examined in more
depth in Chapter 6.
A future threat to democracy?
Even if there is little conclusive evidence that digital technology has contributed to the current
crisis of liberal democracy, this does not mean that it could not threaten democracy in the future.
The remainder of this chapter examines possible ways in which the further development of digital
technology could undermine the necessary preconditions for democracy in Europe to function. Some
fears focus on the nature of the development of technology itself – particularly around its potential to
manipulate human beings and undermine their ability to make informed, autonomous choices. Others
have to do with the increasing power that technological change is giving to corporations, which are
already taking on some of the functions of government – in particular law enforcement – but without
democratic legitimacy.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which digital technology could undermine democracy is
through the further development of computational propaganda. In particular, there is now much
concern about what are termed ‘deep fakes’ – that is, ‘hyper-realistic digital falsification of images,
video, and audio’.52
A number of such ‘deep fakes’ have already gone viral – such as an image
appearing to show Emma González, a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting in Parkland,
Florida and a campaigner for gun control, tearing up the US constitution. The fear is that, as
technologies for manipulating audiovisual content evolve further, it could become even more difficult
for citizens to identify ‘fake news’. This could distort policy debates and even elections and erode
trust in institutions.
There has also been much discussion of the way in which technology companies such as Facebook
and Google carry out surveillance on users in order to predict and even manipulate their behaviour.53
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) based on big data and machine learning could take such
manipulation even further.54
Governments have already begun to ‘nudge’ citizens towards healthier
or more environmentally friendly behaviour.55
But what is sometimes called ‘big nudging’ – that is,
the combination of big data with nudging – could in future be used to control political preferences
in ways that would undermine democracy. As a group of European computer scientists and academics
have warned: ‘The more is known about us, the less likely our choices are to be free and not
predetermined by others.’56
51
Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, pp. 57–58.
52
Chesney, R. and Citron, D. K. (forthcoming), ‘Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security’, California Law
Review, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3213954.
53
Zuboff, S. (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, New York: PublicAffairs. For
a critical review of Zuboff’s book, see Morozov, E. (2019), ‘Capitalism’s New Clothes’, The Baffler, 4 February 2019, https://thebaffler.com/latest/
capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov.
54
See Raines, T. (2019), ‘Democratic disruption: technological change’, SITRA, 1 April 2019, https://www.sitra.fi/en/articles/democratic-
disruption-technological-change/.
55
See, for example, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team or ‘Nudge Unit’, https://www.bi.team.
56
Helbing, D., Frey, B. S., Gigerenzer, G., Hafen, E., Hagner, M., Hofstetter, Y., van den Hoven, J., Zicari, R. V. and Zwitter, A. (2017),
‘Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?, Scientific American, 25 February 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/
will-democracy-survive-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence/.
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15 | Chatham House
Some thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari go even further and speculate that the development of AI
could ultimately lead to the end of the human agency upon which democracy depends.57
‘Together,
infotech and biotech will create unprecedented upheavals in human society, eroding human agency
and, possibly, subverting human desires,’ he writes. ‘Under such conditions, liberal democracy and
free-market economics might become obsolete.’ In particular, he argues, AI could lead to a shift in the
relative efficiency of democracies and dictatorships. ‘The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in
the 20th century – the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place – may become
their decisive advantage in the 21st century.’58
Even if democracies survive this competition, Harari argues, they could become increasingly
hollowed out as the advance of AI leads citizens to delegate decisions to intelligent machines.
‘We might willingly give up more and more authority over our lives because we will learn from
experience to trust the algorithms more than our own feelings, eventually losing our ability to make
many decisions for ourselves,’ he writes.59
A hint of how this might work can already be seen in voting
advice applications such as StemWijzer in the Netherlands and Wahl-O-Mat in Germany, which
advise users on who to vote for based on their preferences or views on particular policy issues. As AI
progresses further, it is possible to imagine citizens outsourcing voting choices entirely to digital tools.
Democracies could become increasingly hollowed out as the advance of AI
leads citizens to delegate decisions to intelligent machines. Indeed, it is possible
to imagine citizens outsourcing voting choices entirely to digital tools.
A final, more indirect way in which technology could challenge democracy in future is through
the effect of automation on work and thus on income inequality. Automation promises to increase
productivity and efficiency and to create new jobs. But it also threatens huge disruption that could
displace workers and lead to changes in the occupational, sectoral and skills-based composition of
employment, as well as in the level and distribution of wages. In the worst-case scenario, the result
could be a kind of ‘jobs apocalypse’ in which many jobs become obsolete.60
In particular, as machines
become more adept at cognitive as well as manual tasks, the next wave of automation could lead to
the loss of service sector jobs much as the previous wave hit manufacturing sector jobs.
There is little consensus about how many and which jobs are vulnerable to the next wave of
automation. An influential 2013 study predicted that as many as 47 per cent of all jobs in the US were
at risk from ‘computerisation’.61
More recently, others have argued that studies such as these, which
rely on an ‘occupation-based approach’, overestimate the threat from automation. A 2016 study for
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that focused on specific
57
Harari, Y. N. (2018), ‘Why Technology Favors Tyranny’, The Atlantic, October 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/
yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
60
Cukier, K. (2019), ‘The Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence’, in Cummings, M. L., Roff, H., Cukier, K., Parakilas, J. and Bryce, H.
(2018), Artificial Intelligence and International Affairs, Chatham House Report, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. 29–42,
here p. 34, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/artificial-intelligence-and-international-affairs.
61
Frey, C. B. and Osborne, M. (2013), The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?, Working Paper, Oxford: Oxford
Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-of-employment.pdf.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
16 | Chatham House
tasks rather than occupations suggested that only around 9 per cent of jobs in advanced economies
are ‘automatable’.62
The impact of automation is also likely to differ from one European country to the
next, depending on the structure of each economy and the vulnerability of specific sectors within it.
The next wave of automation is relevant to the future of democracy in Europe because of its potential
to widen inequality. A certain degree of economic equality is commonly seen as a precondition of
democracy – which is why levels of inequality in many European countries are such a problem.
This connection between equality and democracy goes back to the Greek concept of isonomia, or
‘equality of political rights’.63
The degree and kind of equality needed for a functioning democracy
are debatable – different countries within Europe may have different levels of tolerance of inequality.
But if inequality grows too much, democracy risks becoming plutocracy.
In this sense, the question is not so much how many jobs may be eliminated by automation but
what kinds of jobs – and in particular, whether automation will tend to disproportionately replace
worse-paid jobs or also affect better-paid jobs. Although the 2016 OECD study concluded that
automation was unlikely to destroy large numbers of jobs, it also predicted that ‘low qualified workers
are likely to bear the brunt of the adjustment costs as the automatibility of their jobs is higher
compared to highly qualified workers’.64
Thus, the authors argue, the challenge for the future is to
cope with the rising inequality that will result. In the worst case, automation could lead to a new
‘useless class’.65
Some argue that this will necessitate a universal basic income in order to maintain
social cohesion.
However, it is also possible that the next wave of automation could have a flattening effect on income
scales because some highly paid jobs could be more vulnerable to automation than lower-paid ones.
One German entrepreneur even predicts that in future nurses will get paid more than doctors because
their function will be harder to replace by algorithms and robots.66
This example is speculative, but
it illustrates the idea that automation could affect jobs in complex and surprising ways. Rather than
increasing inequality as the previous wave of automation did, the next wave of automation could
actually decrease it. As with other technological developments, the potential impact of automation
on democracy in Europe is uncertain.
In short, there is much we do not know – and cannot know – about how technology might affect
democracy in the future. Some developments may affect Europe differently from the US or other parts
of the world. Much will depend on the crucial issue of how technology is regulated – which may also
be different in Europe compared to other jurisdictions. The EU has sought to take the lead in creating
consumer-oriented rules to control digital businesses through a framework based on ‘European
values’. But it remains to be seen how much influence this will have, particularly if technological
developments are in future dominated by US and Chinese companies.67
Chapter 7 of this research
paper returns to the issue of regulation.
62
Arntz, M., Gregory, T. and Zierahn, U. (2016), The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries: A Comparative Analysis, OECD Social,
Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 189, Paris: OECD Publishing.
63
See Nolte (2012), Was ist Demokratie?, pp. 35, 434.
64
Arntz, Gregory and Zierahn (2016), The Risk of Automation for Jobs in OECD Countries.
65
Harari (2018), ‘Why Technology Favors Tyranny’.
66
Cited in Cukier (2019), ‘The Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence’, p. 37.
67
See Helgadóttir, A. G. (2019), ‘Will Europe scare off Silicon Valley’, The World Today, August/September 2019, https://www.chathamhouse.org/
publications/twt/will-europe-scare-silicon-valley.
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17 | Chatham House
4. Democratic Institutions and
Processes in Europe
Against this background of enormous complexity and uncertainty, how can democracy in Europe
be made more responsive? To begin to answer this question, it is necessary first to examine existing
democratic institutions and processes in Europe. Democracy in Europe functions in different ways and
at different levels, depending on the country and context. There is a wide range of political systems
in the region. The existence of the EU adds a further level of complexity, as the political systems of
member states interact with the EU’s own structure in varying ways.
Patterns of democracy in Europe
European political systems range from what Arend Lijphart described as ‘majoritarian
democracies’ such as the UK, in which power is concentrated in the hands of the majority, to
‘consensual democracies’ such as Belgium and Switzerland, in which power is shared, dispersed and
restrained in certain ways.68
Lijphart mapped 36 consolidated democracies around the world to two
variables: (a) the extent to which the state was primarily federal or unitary in structure; and (b) the
relative importance of the executive compared to political parties and vice versa. On the ‘federal/
unitary’ measure, European countries range from the extremely federal, such as Germany, to the
extremely unitary, such as the UK (though the latter has become somewhat less unitary in recent
decades). On the ‘executive versus parties’ scale, there is more uniformity: political parties in Europe
tend to be powerful relative to the executive, though there are exceptions such as France and the
UK where the executive is comparatively strong.
A comparison of the three most populous European countries illustrates in more detail the
diversity of democratic systems in the region. Until recently the UK was the paradigmatic ‘majoritarian
democracy’, which is also sometimes referred to as ‘Westminster democracy’. One-party government
is the norm in the UK – though this may be changing as the party system fragments – and the cabinet
is dominant relative to parliament. Members of the lower house are elected in single-member districts
according to the plurality method (‘first past the post’). Government for the most part is extremely
centralized, though this has changed to some extent in recent decades with devolution to the nations
and regions of the UK. The upper house, the House of Lords, is relatively weak. The constitution –
often described, not entirely accurately, as ‘unwritten’ – is flexible, though the UK’s central bank,
the Bank of England, has independently set monetary policy since 1997 (central bank independence
was one of Lijphart’s indicators of a more consensual democracy).
Germany is quite different on both measures: it is the most federal of the 36 democracies
Lijphart surveyed, and parties are relatively powerful compared to the executive. Two-party coalition
governments are the norm.69
Parliament’s power relative to that of the cabinet is greater than in the
UK. Members of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, are elected through a mixture of
68
Lijphart, A. (1999), Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
69
The Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, its Bavarian sister party, are considered here as one party.
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18 | Chatham House
first-past-the-post returns and proportional representation. The upper house, the Bundesrat, is one
of the most powerful in the world, and institutions like the central bank and the Constitutional Court
are extremely independent. In the case of the central bank, Germany has successfully ‘uploaded’ this
preference for independent institutions to the EU level – indeed, the European Central Bank (ECB)
is even more independent than the Bundesbank was.
France is quite different again. Unlike both Germany and the UK, it has what is often described
as a ‘semi-presidential’ system, in which the president is directly elected and powerful relative to
parliament.70
Thus the executive is almost as powerful as in the UK. One-party government is the
norm, though a president of one party sometimes ‘co-habits’ with a parliament in which another
party has a majority. Members of the lower house, the National Assembly, are elected to represent
single-member districts as in the UK, but in two rounds of voting according to a mixed majorityplurality
method. Like the UK, France is relatively unitary. The Constitutional Council functions
as a kind of supreme court but is relatively weak.71
On the other hand, since the introduction of
the euro the country in effect has had an extremely independent central bank in the form of the
ECB (again, an indicator of a more consensual system).
In general, European democracies have become more consensual over time. In part this has been
because of the fragmentation of party systems, which has made multi-party coalition governments
more likely. In part it is also because for countries that joined the EU, membership has introduced
(in Lijphart’s terms) more constitutional rigidity – and, for eurozone countries, a more independent
central bank – than was previously the case. This shift to a more consensual form of democracy could
be seen as a good thing. Lijphart saw consensual democracy as a ‘kinder, gentler’ form of democracy
than majoritarian democracy.72
However, because it diffuses power and may therefore create a sense
of lack of accountability, it may also have played a role in undermining popular confidence in liberal
democracy in Europe.
Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of ‘nonpolitical,
or depoliticized, modes of decision-making’ as powers previously
held by national legislatures have been ceded to courts, central banks and
supranational institutions.
In particular, many analysts see the growth of independent or ‘non-majoritarian’ institutions in the
context of hyper-globalization as a problem. Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic
expansion of what Mair calls ‘non-political, or depoliticized, modes of decision-making’, as powers
previously held by national legislatures have been ceded to courts, central banks and supranational
institutions.73
This has in part been a deliberate move by nation state governments to regulate highly
technical policy areas and maintain price stability, and in part a consequence of the proliferation of
70
A ‘semi-presidential’ system is one in which a president exists alongside a prime minister, who is dependent on the confidence of the legislature
as in a parliamentary system. The term was developed in particular to describe the French Fifth Republic, established in 1958. Among European
countries, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Romania also have semi-presidential systems.
71
The Constitutional Council has existed since the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Lijphart writes that its original function was to ‘protect
executive power against legislative encroachment’ – in other words, the opposite of the function of a constitutional court as normally understood.
Since 1974, relatively small minorities can submit questions of constitutionality to the court, though lower courts still cannot refer cases to it.
Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, pp. 213–14.
72
Ibid., Chapter 16.
73
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 19. See also Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 59; and Zielonka, J. (2017), Counter-Revolution: Liberal
Europe in Retreat, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 43–46.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
19 | Chatham House
international treaties and organizations during the past 40 years. The cumulative result has been
a ‘creeping erosion of democracy’.74
This challenges the idea that the crisis of liberal democracy
can simply be solved by shifting towards more consensual formats.
Given the heterogeneity of political systems in Europe, debates about reform also differ. In the UK,
the debate focuses on further devolution to the nations and regions, the introduction of proportional
representation in national elections, and further reform of the House of Lords. Each of these reforms
would lead to a more consensual form of democracy. In Germany the Bundestag president, Wolfgang
Schäuble, has sought to reduce both the size of the Bundestag and the power of the Bundesrat.75
In
France, figures such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left party La France Insoumise, have
demanded the end of what they see as a ‘presidential monarchy’ and called for a new ‘Sixth Republic’
in which the president would be more accountable to parliament, and in which parliament itself
would be elected by proportional representation.76
It is tempting to think there might be an ideal democratic system on which all European countries
might converge. However, this temptation should be resisted. Each system is based on national
norms that are the product of cultural preferences and historical contingencies. For example, the
power of the French president is a response to the paralysis of parliament during the Fourth Republic
(1946–58). In Germany the requirement that parties win 5 per cent of the vote in order to enter
the Bundestag is a response to the failure of parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic,
and in particular the fear that Bonn might in effect ‘become Weimar’ if parliament were similarly
fragmented.77
In short, there is no one political system that is right for all of Europe.
In any case, whatever its political system, no country in Europe seems to be immune from the current
crisis of liberal democracy. Whether seen through the prism of populism, democratic deconsolidation
or ‘hollowing out’, the crisis seems to have affected all European countries, though variations in
political systems may mean that the crisis takes a slightly different form in each context. For example,
the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system made it harder for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to
enter parliament, yet on the other hand the pressure UKIP exerted led indirectly to the referendum on
British membership of the EU. National debates on reform of democratic institutions should of course
continue. But there is no simple institutional fix for the problems currently in evidence.
The EU dimension
Even if the democratic processes of individual EU member states can be made more responsive, there
remains the question of the extent to which the EU itself is or is not democratic. There has long been
a debate among academics as to whether the EU has a ‘democratic deficit’.78
As European integration
has continued over the past few decades and power has shifted from member state governments
74
Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 60.
75
See ‘Dem Bundestag gelingt es nicht zu schrumpfen’ [The Bundestag fails to shrink], Die Zeit, 3 April 2019, https://www.zeit.de/
politik/deutschland/2019-04/wahlrechtsreform-bundestag-wolfgang-schaeuble-scheitern; and Spiegel Online (2019), ‘Schäuble verlangt
Bundesratsreform’ [Schäuble demands Bundesrat reform], 4 May 2019, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesrat-wolfgang-
schaeuble-fordert-abstimmungsregeln-zu-aendern-a-1265762.html.
76
Mélenchon, J.-L. (2017), L’Avenir en commun. Le programme de la France insoumise et son candidat [Common future: The programme of France
Insoumise and its candidate], Paris: Seuil, p. 26.
77
Graf, F. W. and Meier, H. (eds) (2018), Die Zukunft der Demokratie. Kritik und Plädoyer [The Future of Democracy: Critique and Plea],
Munich: C. H. Beck, p. 9.
78
See, for example, Majone, G. (1998), ‘Europe’s Democratic Deficit’, European Law Journal, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp. 5–28; and Moravcsik, A.
(2002), ‘In Defence of the “Democratic Deficit”: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Volume 40,
Issue 4, pp. 603–24.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
20 | Chatham House
to the EU level, the fear has been that, as Alan Milward wrote in 2005, democracy in Europe might
‘slide slowly away through the interstices between the nation state and the supranation’.79
Even those
analysts (usually pro-European centrists) who see the crisis of liberal democracy in terms of populism
understand it in part as a response to the lack of democracy in the EU. For example, Mounk describes
the EU as the paradigmatic case of ‘undemocratic liberalism’.80
The EU can be seen as an extreme example of a global trend within a regional context. The
deepening of economic integration during the past 40 years – in other words Rodrik’s so-called
hyper-globalization – has created the need for an expanded system of rules, which have to some
extent displaced politics. Within the EU, the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, goods
and people has gone even further than in the rest of the world during this period – thus requiring
an even greater degree of ‘depoliticisation’ or ‘constitutionalisation’.81
This change has also been
understood as an increase in the domination of the constitutional pillar of democracy over the popular
pillar – or, quite simply, as ‘the triumph of law over politics’.82
Thus, questions about democracy
go to essence of the EU.
In so far as the EU can be understood as a democracy in theoretical terms, it is as a ‘consensual
democracy’ – which partly explains the particular difficulties that the UK, historically a majoritarian
democracy, has had with it. But the EU does not neatly fit the model of a consensus democracy
either.83
The European Commission is usually seen as a kind of European executive, but the European
Council (which consists of the heads of government of EU member states) is also seen as part of the
EU’s executive branch – a kind of ‘cabinet’. The European Parliament and the Council of the European
Union (which consists of ministers from member states and is therefore sometimes also called
the Council of Ministers) can be thought of as corresponding to the two chambers of a bicameral
legislature, though if the Parliament is understood as the equivalent of the lower house, it is
unusually weak.84
Within the EU, the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, goods and
people has gone even further than in the rest of the world – thus requiring an
even greater degree of ‘depoliticisation’ or ‘constitutionalisation’.
In recent years the EU has taken some steps towards becoming more democratic in conventional
terms. In particular, the powers of the European Parliament – the one EU institution that is directly
elected – have increased. Partly as a result, it can be argued that European Parliament elections are no
longer the ‘second order’ elections they once were.85
In 2014 the EU introduced the Spitzenkandidaten
process, in which party groupings in the European Parliament nominate a lead candidate for the
79
Milward, A. S. (2005), ‘The European Union as a Superstate’, The International History Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 90–105, here p. 105.
80
See Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, Chapter 2.
81
On depoliticization, see van Middelaar, L. (2019), Alarums & Excursions: Improvising Politics on the European Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne:
Agenda Publishing, Chapter 7. Van Middelaar distinguishes between three types of depoliticization: ‘technical’, ‘constitutional’ and ‘procedural’.
On constitutionalization, see Grimm, D. (2015), ‘The Democratic Costs of Constitutionalisation: The European Case’, European Law Journal,
Volume 21, Issue 4.
82
Bickerton, C. (2018), ‘Beyond the European void? Reflections on Peter Mair’s legacy’, European Law Journal, Volume 24, Issue 4–5,
September 2018, pp. 268–80, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eulj.12287.
83
Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, pp. 40–45. For an illuminating discussion of the evolution and role of the various EU institutions,
see van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 6.
84
See Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, p. 41. To complicate matters further, the Council of Ministers also has executive functions.
See van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 6.
85
Reif, K. and Schmitt, M. (1980), ‘Nine Second-Order National Elections – A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election
Results’, European Journal of Political Research, Volume 8, Issue 1, pp. 3–44.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
21 | Chatham House
position of European Commission president. In the 2019 election, turnout increased to 51 per cent.86
Nevertheless, awareness of the Spitzenkandidaten remained low even in Germany – despite the fact
that it was a German term and one of the leading candidates was German.87
After the 2019 election,
the EU abandoned the Spitzenkandidaten process – at least for the time being.88
Despite these changes and the increase in turnout, the structure of the EU means that debates in
the European Parliament continue to take place along largely national or geographic lines on the
one hand – witness the debates between Germany and France, or ‘north’ and ‘south’, on the euro,
for example – and along pro-European versus anti-European lines on the other. What is still missing
is the sort of debate between left and right, for example around questions of redistribution, that, at
least historically, has defined national elections. The rise of Eurosceptic parties has increased tensions
between member states. And it has prompted centrist parties to join forces in response, which in
turn has strengthened the perception – particularly among Eurosceptics – that the EU is run by
a kind of ‘cartel’.
In part because of this tendency among ‘pro-European’ parties to close ranks against Eurosceptic
ones, there is no rotation between parties following elections in the way that is familiar at a national
level – not just in majoritarian democracies like the UK but also in more consensual democracies like
Germany. It is almost as if the EU is permanently governed by a grand coalition without an opposition
except for the ‘anti-Europeans’.89
It may be that citizens of some member states – such as Austria,
where grand coalitions have been the norm in post-war history – are more comfortable with this
arrangement than citizens of other EU states are.90
But the danger is that it gives voters the sense that
they cannot vote out the government – a key precondition of democracy, at least in the common-sense
use of the term.
Although there is a relatively wide consensus about these problems with the EU, there is little
agreement about how they can be solved. There are two basic views. The first is that the only way to
make the EU more democratic is to ‘complete’ European integration. According to this federalist view,
the European Parliament must be given greater powers so that it more closely resembles the lower
house of a typical bicameral legislature.91
In this model, the Council would become a kind of upper
house representing the ‘regions’ of a post-national Europe. But however desirable in principle such
a new settlement might be in the eyes of its advocates, it is difficult to imagine national parliaments
voting to give up much of their own power and in effect turning themselves into regional legislatures.
86
European Parliament (2019), ‘Elections 2019: highest turnout in 20 years’, news release, 27 May 2019, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/
en/headlines/eu-affairs/20190523STO52402/elections-2019-highest-turnout-in-20-years. On the 2019 elections, see also Youngs, R. (2019),
‘Democracy after the European Parliament elections’, Centre for European Policy Studies, 17 June 2019, https://www.ceps.eu/wp-content/
uploads/2019/06/PI2019_10_RY_Democracy-after-the-European-Parliament-elections-1.pdf.
87
YouGov (2019), ‘Europawahl: Jeder Zweite kennt keinen der deutschen Spitzenkandidaten’ [European election: One in two voters does
not know any of the German Spitzenkandidaten], 24 April 2019, https://yougov.de/news/2019/04/24/europawahl-ist-fur-wahler-deutlich-
weniger-wichtig/.
88
However, two Spitzenkandidaten, Frans Timmermans and Margarete Vestager, did become vice-presidents of the European Commission
following the election.
89
On the absence of opposition in the EU, see Mair, P. (2017), ‘Political Opposition and the European Union’, Government and Opposition,
Volume 42, Issue 1, 2017, pp. 1–17, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/government-and-opposition/article/political-opposition-and-theeuropean-union-1/7C9AEB444CBFE3FF85AE655C9CD4DD93;
and van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 7.
90
Grand coalitions – that is, coalitions of the two largest parties – have governed Austria for over half of its post-war history. Grand coalitions
have also been frequent in Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On the ‘democratic dysfunctions’
that can result from the extended use of grand coalitions, see Jacoby, W. (2017), ‘Grand Coalitions and Democratic Dysfunction: Two Warnings
from Central Europe’, Government and Opposition, Volume 52, Issue 2, pp. 329–55, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/government-and-
opposition/article/grand-coalitions-and-democratic-dysfunction-two-warnings-from-central-europe/DA79E0E2EBB11CD8A11E2EF93306A875.
91
See, for example, Guérot, U. (2019), Warum Europa eine Republik werden muss! Eine politische Utopie [Why Europe must become a republic.
A political utopia], Bonn: Dietz.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
22 | Chatham House
The opposite view is that EU member states should be re-empowered by repatriating competences
back to the national level. Advocates of this approach have often pointed to the difficulty of creating
a legitimate democracy at the EU level, in the absence of a common European language and therefore
of a European public sphere and by extension a European demos.92
(Interestingly, however, the
extraordinary development of translation software through machine learning may mean that the
absence of a common language becomes less of a problem in the future.) Some even see it as a mistake
to have introduced the direct election of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in 1979. In this
alternative model of a democratic EU, legitimacy would come from national parliaments rather than
from the European Parliament.93
There have also been attempts to find a ‘third way’ between these two diametrically opposed
views. Such attempts focus on various ways of bridging the gap between national parliaments and
the EU institutions – Milward’s ‘interstices’ – and in particular on combining the greater domestic
legitimacy of national parliaments with the more transnational approach of the EU institutions.
Various proposals have been made about how to improve the representation and participation of the
parliaments of member states in democratic institutions and politics at the EU level. For example,
a group of French thinkers including the economist Thomas Piketty has recently proposed the creation
of a ‘European Assembly’ that would include both MEPs and members of national parliaments.94
Updating democratic institutions and processes
Reform of democratic institutions at the national and European levels would be enormously
challenging and complex. But even in the absence of such measures, much can be done to improve
democratic processes. In particular, digital technology can be used to make such processes more
accessible, responsive and transparent. The debate around the impact of social media obscures the
way in which many democratic institutions and processes in Europe have scarcely been touched by
technology that has transformed many other aspects of life. For example, speakers are still required
to be physically present in debates, and there is little use of digital information and data sharing
during parliamentary sessions.95
The debate around the impact of social media obscures the way in which
many democratic institutions and processes in Europe have scarcely been
touched by technology that has transformed many other aspects of life.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which technology can be used to update democratic processes is
to introduce the option of voting online in elections – assuming, of course, that this can be done
securely. Estonia has been a world leader in what it calls ‘i-voting’, which it introduced in municipal
elections in 2005 and in parliamentary elections in 2007. In the 2019 parliamentary election,
44 per cent of votes were online. The option of voting online could help to increase turnout in
92
See, for example, Miller, D. (2015), ‘A Plea for Pluralism’, in van Middelaar, L. and Van Parijs, P. (eds) (2015), After the Storm. How to Save
Democracy in Europe, Tielt: Lannoo, pp. 181–88, here p. 186.
93
See, for example, Jörke, D. (2019), Die Größe der Demokratie [The size of democracy], Berlin: Suhrkamp.
94
Henette, S., Piketty, T., Sacriste, G. and Vauchez, G. (2019), How to Democratize Europe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. The book
was originally published in French as Pour un traité de democratization de I’Europe [For a treaty to democratize Europe], Paris: Seuil. See also the
authors’ ‘Manifesto for the Democratization of Europe’, available at http://tdem.eu/en/manifesto/.
95
See Simon, J., Bass, T., Boelman, V. and Mulgan, G. (2017), Digital Democracy. The tools transforming political engagement, London: Nesta, p. 8,
https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/digital_democracy.pdf.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
23 | Chatham House
elections. It might also particularly benefit one specific marginalized group: disabled people.96
However, there is little evidence so far to suggest that it would help include alienated voters of other
kinds – for example, those who vote for populist parties. After all, in some cases older people, who
may be less likely to vote online, disproportionately support such parties.
Another straightforward application of digital technology could be to increase transparency
and access to information about democratic processes. A world leader in this area is e-Democracia,
a Brazilian portal that aims to make the legislative process more transparent and improve citizens’
understanding of it.97
Similar attempts are under way in Europe. In 2015 the UK parliament set itself
the challenge of being ‘fully interactive and digital’ by 2020, including providing more information in
real time and using digital communication to explain law-making.98
Volunteer organizations such as
Democracy Club also seek to provide information about democratic processes. Elsewhere in Europe,
websites such as asktheeu.org and fragdenstaat.de make it easier for citizens to use freedom-ofinformation
laws.
However, further efforts are needed to engage the public more deeply in democracy, beyond
online voting and informing citizens about democratic processes. Much of the remainder of this
paper examines two particular ways in which it may be possible to improve democratic engagement.
Chapter 5 explores how political parties, which historically played a crucial role in mediating between
citizens and the state, could be revitalized. Chapter 6 explores a range of experiments in direct
and deliberative democracy that involve citizens in debate and decision-making and thus have
the potential to complement and perhaps even move beyond representative democracy.
96
See Chowdhury, A. (2018), ‘Online voting: fantasy or future?’, Commission on Democracy and Technology in Europe, Chatham House,
24 October 2018, https://demtech.chathamhouse.org/online-voting-fantasy-or-future/.
97
See Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan (2017), Digital Democracy, pp. 19–23.
98
Digital Democracy Commission (2015), Open Up! Report of the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, 26 January 2015, p. 7,
http://www.digitaldemocracy.parliament.uk/documents/Open-Up-Digital-Democracy-Report.pdf. For updates on the progress towards this goal,
see Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy (undated), https://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/the-speaker/speakers-commission-
on-digital-democracy/.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
24 | Chatham House
5. A New Age of Party Democracy?
‘The age of party democracy has passed,’ Peter Mair wrote in the early 2000s. ‘Although the parties
themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of
competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy
in its present form.’99
When Mair was writing, political parties seemed to be in chronic decline. But
more recently, there has been something of a turnaround as new parties have emerged – often using
digital technology in innovative ways. Though the emergence of these parties has not reduced political
volatility, it suggests a possible reinvention of political parties that could refill what Mair called the
‘void’ in democracy in Europe.
The rise and fall of party democracy
Political parties emerged along with representative democracy in the late 18th century. In fact, the
development of parties was so closely intertwined with the development of this form of democracy
that it seemed impossible to imagine one without the other. As the American political scientist
E. E. Schattschneider put it: ‘The political parties created democracy and modern democracy is
unthinkable save in terms of the parties.’100
The function of parties was to simultaneously divide and
unite citizens by aggregating voter preferences. Parties represented the interests of particular groups
in society. At the same time, they also governed – or at least sought to. As Schattschneider put it,
a political party is ‘an organized attempt to get control of the government’.101
There was initially much resistance to organizing citizens in this way. Many liberals opposed
the idea of political parties. For example, the founding fathers of the United States saw them as
dangerous. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote of his opposition to ‘factions’, by which he
understood ‘a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who
are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of
other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community’.102
Nevertheless, parties
became increasingly central to democracy in both Europe and the US, though scepticism towards
them continues in the idea of ‘special interests’ that are perceived to undermine democracy.
However, although political parties have accompanied representative democracy since its emergence
in the 18th century, there has been an evolution in the role they have played – in particular in the
20th century. As the franchise was expanded in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mass
parties emerged. These were ‘interest parties’ or ‘milieu parties’ based on class identities (like the
German Social Democrats) or confessional identities (like the Zentrumspartei, or Centre Party, which
represented Catholics in Germany). Such parties strove to create what Mair calls ‘closed political
communities’ based on ‘closed social communities, in which large collectivities of citizens shared
distinct social experiences’.103
99
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 1.
100
Schattschneider, E. E. (1943), Party Government, New York: Rinehart, p. 3.
101
Ibid., p. 35.
102
Madison, J. (1787), ‘The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection’, Congress.gov,
Federalist Number 10, https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-10.
103
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 78.
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25 | Chatham House
Following the Second World War, these parties sought to appeal to voters beyond their original
milieux and consolidated into what Otto Kirchheimer called Allerweltsparteien or ‘catch-all parties’.104
Thus the German Social Democrats sought to expand their base beyond the urban working class, while
the Christian Democratic Union was founded in 1945 as an inter-denominational party that would
go beyond the Centre Party’s Catholic base. These post-war parties took ‘a more aggressive approach
to elections, attempting to win often short-term and contingent support far beyond the limits of their
once pre-defined constituencies’.105
In other words, they became ‘primarily office-seeking parties’ that
exchanged ‘representational integrity’ for electoral success.106
Some political scientists have identified a further, more recent transition in the final decades of
the 20th century, in which catch-all parties turned into so-called ‘cartel parties’.107
As they sought to
compete for the same voters, parties converged ideologically and increasingly colluded with each
other – hence coming to resemble a cartel. In part as a response to declining participation, parties also
turned increasingly to the resources of the state to sustain themselves, for example by relying more
on state funding. Thus meaningful differences between parties shrank, and the gap between parties
and voters widened, as parties withdrew further from their role in civil society and into the realm
of government and the state. In short, parties went from being ‘social actors’ to ‘state actors’.108
As they sought to compete for the same voters, parties converged ideologically
and increasingly colluded with each other – hence coming to resemble a cartel.
Membership of political parties has clearly declined across Europe, particularly since the 1980s
and 1990s.109
The percentage of voters who were members of a political party in Europe halved from
an average of just under 10 per cent in 1980 to under 5 per cent in 2009. A particularly interesting
example of this haemorrhaging of members is the British Labour Party. Its membership went from
several million during the 1950s to under 200,000 during the era of Tony Blair. More broadly
across Europe, even those who remained members of parties seemed to be less active and engaged,
and many were members on paper only. Political parties were, as Mair put it, ‘rapidly losing their
capacity to engage citizens’.110
It was against this background that he declared the end of the age
of party democracy.
Given the centrality of parties in the history of representative democracy, this process of what
political scientists call ‘de-alignment’ – that is, the weakening of citizens’ identification with parties –
was extremely worrying. If Schattschneider was right that democracy was unthinkable without
parties, their decline seemed to suggest the end of democracy altogether. At a minimum, the decline
of parties seemed to be leading to a redefinition of liberal democracy away from its ‘popular’ element
104
Kirchheimer, O. (1965), ‘Der Wandel des westeuropäischen Parteiensystems’ [The change in the western European party system], Politische
Vierteljahresschrift, pp. 20–41.
105
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 82.
106
Ibid., p. 88.
107
Katz, R. S. and Mair, P. (1995), ‘Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: the emergence of the cartel party’, Party Politics,
Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5–28.
108
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 84.
109
Katz, R. S., Mair, P., Bardi, L., Bille, L., Deschouwer, K., Farrell, D., Koole, R., Morlino, L., Müller, W., Pierre, J., Poguntke, T., Sundberg, J.,
Svasand, L., van de Velde, H., Webb, P. and Widfeldt, A. (1992), ‘The membership of political parties in European democracies, 1960–1990’,
European Journal of Political Research, Issue 22, pp. 329–45; Mair, P. and van Biezen, I. (2001), ‘Party Membership in Twenty European
Democracies, 1980–2000’, Party Politics, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp. 5–21; and van Biezen, I., Mair, P. and Poguntke, T. (2012), ‘Going, Going, … Gone?
The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, Volume 51, Number 1, pp. 24–56.
110
Mair and van Biezen (2001), ‘Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980–2000’, p. 5.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
26 | Chatham House
(that is, popular sovereignty, or government by the people) and towards its ‘constitutional’ element
(that is, a system of basic rights and checks and balances, or government for the people). As Mair
put it: ‘As parties fail, so too fails popular democracy.’111
The emergence of ‘digital parties’
Some continue to believe that political parties are doomed and imagine a kind of ‘post-party
democracy’. But recently there have been some signs of a reversal of the decline of political parties in
Europe – in other words, signs of a possible ‘re-alignment’. In particular, there has been a proliferation
of new parties – many widely seen as populist – that have been remarkably successful both in terms
of membership and elections. Part of what makes these new parties interesting is the innovative ways
in which they have used technology. This may in part explain their success. Whatever their ideologies
and positions on specific policy issues, they may have hit upon a way of reconnecting citizens to
political parties and thus refilling the ‘void’.
As we saw in Chapter 3, much attention has focused on how political figures, movements and parties
use social media as a campaigning and mobilizing tool – i.e. to address external imperatives. This has
been especially associated with populism, though nearly all mainstream parties now use social media
in this way. But in terms of making democracy more responsive, the more interesting development
may be the way in which some parties, mainly but not exclusively those usually categorized as
populist, have used digital technology for internal purposes – as part or even as the basis of their own
structure. In particular, they have created online platforms to consult members and take decisions,
including determining policy choices and electing party officials.
Paolo Gerbaudo sees these parties as representing a new paradigm which he calls the ‘digital party’ or
‘platform party’.112
The digital party, as he defines it, ‘mimics the logic of companies such as Facebook
and Amazon of integrating the data-driven logic of social networks into its very decision-making
structure’. It is constantly ‘eliciting feedback from its member/user base, crowdsourcing ideas from
it, balloting on issues, measuring the response of the public and modifying its strategy and messaging
accordingly’. By reinventing the relationship of parties with their members, these parties ‘present
themselves as the solution to the democratic deficit that has turned political institutions into the
preserve of technocrats and self-serving politicians’.113
The first digital parties were the so-called Pirate parties that emerged in various northern European
countries in the mid-2000s.114
They did not just integrate technology into their internal structures but
also mostly focused on issues specifically related to technology – in particular, digital copyright issues.
(The original Pirate Party, in Sweden, was created in response to the Antipiratbyran, or Anti-Piracy
Bureau, an entertainment industry pressure group that pushed for stricter copyright policy – hence its
name.) What might be called the second wave of digital parties – like the Five-Star Movement (M5S)
111
Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 9.
112
Gerbaudo, P. (2018), The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy, London: Pluto Press.
113
Ibid., p. 4.
114
The first Pirate Party was set up in Sweden in 2006 by the former Liberal politician Rick Falkvinge. It won 7 per cent of the vote in the European
elections in 2009, and thus sent two MEPs to the European Parliament. Pirate parties in the Czech Republic, Germany and Iceland also succeeded
in getting candidates elected to national and European parliaments in the 2010s.
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in Italy and Podemos in Spain, both of which came to prominence in the 2010s – have used a similar
organizational template to that pioneered by the Pirates. However, they have stood on broader
platforms and have had even greater success.115
No party arguably exemplifies the effectiveness of the approach more than M5S, which was created
in 2009 by the comedian Beppe Grillo and the web strategist Gianroberto Casaleggio. The party’s
name is a reference to the five issues on which it originally focused: public water, sustainable
transport, sustainable development, the right to internet access, and environmentalism. From the
beginning its activities took place mainly online – initially through Grillo’s blog and then through
its portal, Rousseau. The latter can be understood as the party’s ‘operating system’, through which
decisions are taken on policy positions. In the 2018 Italian general election, M5S won 33 per cent
of the votes to become the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies; it then formed a coalition
government with the far-right Lega.
Podemos was created in 2014 by a group of young Madrid-based academics around Pablo Iglesias,
who had become a regular guest on political talk shows in Spain. It is a more traditional left-wing
party than M5S, having grown out of the anti-austerity Indignados movement. But like M5S it has
embraced digital technology as a way to meet demand for ‘real democracy’. It has its own portal,
Participa, through which important decisions, including policy choices and elections to party office,
are supposed to take place. In the 2015 election, Podemos became the third-largest party in the
Spanish parliament with 21 per cent of the vote.
Although the new digital parties promote a ‘participationist utopia of
leaderlessness and horizontalism’, they actually function in a much more
centralized and top-down way than this rhetoric suggests.
However, there are a number of reasons to be sceptical of the promise of digital parties to ‘deliver
a new politics supported by digital technology’ that is ‘more democratic, more open to ordinary
people, more immediate and direct, more authentic and transparent’.116
Digital parties are obsessive
about participation, or what Gerbaudo calls ‘participationism’.117
But in practice relatively few of
their members take part in online deliberation and decision-making. For example, only 4 per cent
of Podemos’s 380,000 members contributed to the collaborative drafting of the party’s platform
in 2015.118
Larger numbers of members tend to take part in online votes. But these often produce
a supermajority in favour of the party leadership.
Thus although the new digital parties promote a ‘participationist utopia of leaderlessness and
horizontalism’, they actually function in a much more centralized and top-down way than this
rhetoric suggests.119
Internal party democracy tends to be plebiscitary in practice. The party base
mainly reacts to initiatives by the leadership rather than making proposals itself, and often simply
endorses the position or mandate of the leadership. In fact, Gerbaudo writes, participation often
115
An alternative way of understanding M5S and Podemos is as ‘techno-populist’ parties. See Bickerton, C. J. and Accetti, C. I. (2018),
‘“Techno-populism” as a new party family: the case of the Five Star Movement and Podemos’, Contemporary Italian Politics, 10:2,
2018, pp. 132–50.
116
Gerbaudo (2018), The Digital Party, p. 4.
117
Ibid., Chapter 4.
118
Ibid., p. 131.
119
Ibid., p. 187.
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simply functions to empower a ‘hyper-leader’ such as Grillo or Iglesias (though it is unclear how much
this is a function of the use of technology rather than other factors).120
In short, the digital party has
a ‘problematic underside’.121
‘Populist’ parties as a model?
Nevertheless, despite this gap between rhetoric and reality, experiments by digital parties that are
often categorized as populist may ‘prefigure the shape of a future democracy to come’.122
In particular,
given the centrality of parties in the history of representative democracy, the use of digital technology
by parties themselves may have more potential than online voting to reinvigorate democracy.
Digital technology could help parties recover the role they once played in making government more
responsive to the interests of particular groups, which in turn might help bridge the gap between
‘responsive’ and ‘responsible’ government. Thus, mainstream parties should carefully examine the
ways in which digital parties have used technology to see if they can learn from them.
One mainstream party that has done this is the British Labour party, which has in some ways
managed to buck the trend of decline among social democratic parties in Europe. After declining,
as mentioned, from several million in the 1950s to under 200,000 in the Blair era, the party’s
membership has increased again to over 500,000 (though of course this did not translate into success
at the 2019 general election). While the revival in membership may partly be because of Labour’s
shift to the left under Jeremy Corbyn, the party has also used methods similar to those of M5S and
Podemos. In particular, Momentum, the campaign group established after Corbyn’s election as party
leader in 2015, set up its own online ‘participation portal’, My Momentum, through which members
can participate in discussions and take decisions.123
The German Social Democrats have also begun
to experiment with online voting.
Many of the new digital parties have demanded reform of democratic
institutions and processes to create a more participatory democracy –
one in which citizens are engaged in decision-making in a deeper way.
However, while mainstream parties may benefit from applying some of the techniques used by
their digital counterparts, there remain a number of challenges that need to be addressed. One
is around who exactly participates in new forms of online engagement. For example, the German
Greens, long known for their Streitkultur, or ‘debate culture’, have introduced online surveys and
petitions to stimulate discussion among members. But research shows that engagement via these tools
has been disproportionately higher among members who are better off, better educated and already
more active in the party.124
Guillaume Royer, the participation coordinator of La France Insoumise,
has suggested that participatory platforms can create a ‘tyranny of people with time’.125
120
Ibid., Chapter 8.
121
Ibid., p. 18.
122
Ibid., p. 127.
123
See Gerbaudo, P. (undated), ‘Momentum, Labour and the Rise of the Platform Party’, Pluto Press, https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/
momentum-labour-online-digital-activism-social-media-party/.
124
Thuermer, G., Roth, S., O’Hara, K. and Staab, S. (2018), ‘Everybody Thinks Online Participation is Great – for Somebody Else: A Qualitative
and Quantitative Analysis of Perceptions and Expectations of Online Participation in the Green Party Germany’, ‘WebSci ’18 Proceedings of the
10th ACM Conference on Web Science’, pp. 287–96.
125
Gerbaudo (2018), The Digital Party, pp. 90–91.
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As well as innovating in terms of their internal structures, many of the new digital parties have
demanded reform of democratic institutions and processes to create a more participatory democracy –
one in which citizens are engaged in decision-making in a deeper way than is currently the case. For
many of them, alternative forms of democracy, particularly direct democracy, offer a way of moving
beyond representative democracy. For example, Davide Casaleggio (Gianroberto’s son), who manages
M5S’s Rousseau platform, wrote that ‘representative democracy – politics by proxy – is gradually
losing meaning’.126
The next chapter explores the potential of these alternative forms of democracy.
126
Casaleggio, D. (2018), ‘A top leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement: Why we won’, Washington Post, 13 March 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/03/19/five-star/.
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6. Beyond Representative Democracy?
According to the minimalist definition associated with the political economist Joseph Schumpeter,
democracy is simply a matter of leadership selection. Democracy ‘does not and cannot mean that the
people actually rule in any obvious sense of “people” and “rule”’, he wrote in 1942. It ‘means only that
the people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them’.127
However,
this version of democracy now seems hopelessly anachronistic. It seems that citizens no longer simply
want to elect their leaders every four or five years and do as they are told in the period in between.
Rather, there seems to be growing demand from citizens to be more involved in the ongoing process
of deliberation and decision-making.
In response to this demand, there has been a proliferation of experiments in other forms of democracy.
Some complement and support the representative model that goes back to the late 18th century. But
others suggest the possibility of moving beyond it. Decision-making could function quite differently
while remaining within a constitutional framework that guaranteed the rule of law, an independent
judiciary, media freedom and minority rights. In other words, liberal democracy may be compatible
with alternatives to representative democracy. Europeans should therefore be open to forms of
democracy that could complement or even ultimately replace representative democracy.128
This chapter examines direct democracy and deliberative democracy, the two main alternatives to
representative democracy. These two forms of democracy can be thought of as contrasting responses
to the limitations and weaknesses of the representative model. Whereas direct democracy tends
to polarize, deliberative democracy seeks to overcome polarization and create consensus. Views
about these two forms of democracy therefore tend to reflect assumptions about how adversarial
and competitive democratic politics should be (for example, deliberative democracy is popular
among centrists). Direct democracy and deliberative democracy create different opportunities –
and dangers – for liberal democracy.
Direct democracy
The aim of direct democracy, which goes back to the Athenian city-state, is to give the electorate an
opportunity to take decisions in a more immediate way than is the case in representative democracy.
Direct democracy’s most common methods are referendums, citizens’ initiatives, agenda initiatives
and recall elections. Referendums are already widely used in Europe, particularly for amending
national constitutions. Some European countries also have provisions for citizens’ initiatives (which
give the electorate a vote on a measure proposed by a number of citizens) and agenda initiatives
(which put an issue on the political agenda and require a specified authority, usually the legislature,
to consider and/or act on a proposal).129
127
Schumpeter, J. (1942), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper and Row, p. 1.
128
On the idea of a ‘post-representational democracy’, see Tormey, S. (2015), The End of Representative Politics, London: Polity Press.
129
See International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (2008), Direct Democracy. The international IDEA handbook, 2008,
https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/direct-democracy-the-international-idea-handbook.pdf. Recall elections are not
discussed in this chapter because they are rarely used in Europe.
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Cultural attitudes to direct democracy vary across Europe in ways that do not fit neatly into
Lijphart’s contrast between majoritarian and consensual democracies. The UK – the paradigmatic
majoritarian democracy – has selectively used referendums to deal with questions of constitutional
reform, and with the issue of membership of the EU. Its recent experience illustrates how direct
democracy can conflict with representative democracy. Germans, meanwhile, are suspicious of
direct democracy, which is considered another ‘lesson of Weimar’.130
But Switzerland – according
to Lijphart’s typology, one of the most consensual democracies in the world – makes more use
of referendums than any other country in Europe.
Nor is it even clear whether direct democracy should itself be categorized as a majoritarian or
consensual element. Referendums are generally seen as ‘the most extreme majoritarian method of
decision-making, that is, even more majoritarian than representative majoritarian democracy’.131
But
Lijphart argues that, when referendums form part of the process of amending a constitution, they
should actually be seen as an ‘anti-majoritarian device’ – in particular, because they give minorities the
opportunity to campaign against a proposed amendment. In other words, whether the introduction of
referendums makes a democracy more majoritarian or consensual depends on their exact role in the
political system.
Whether the introduction of referendums makes a democracy more majoritarian
or consensual depends on their exact role in the political system.
Switzerland has had provisions for direct democracy in its constitution since 1778. Its political
system is sometimes called a ‘semi-direct democracy’: that is, a representative democracy that makes
extensive use of elements of direct democracy. Citizens’ initiatives and referendums are used at both
the national and cantonal level. Typically, Swiss citizens vote on several initiatives, constitutional
proposals or treaties three or four times each year. Passage of a measure at the national level requires
a double majority: that is, a majority of the overall vote and a majority of cantons in favour. Though
the Swiss system has sometimes produced controversial decisions, such as the banning of the
construction of minarets in 2009, it is generally considered to work well.132
A number of other European countries, such as Denmark and Ireland, require referendums for
constitutional amendments. Referendums have often been held as part of processes for deciding
whether to join the EU or whether to ratify major EU treaties, such as the Maastricht Treaty in 1992
and the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. Thus the EU can be said to ‘generate’ referendums.133
Because
referendums have often led to the rejection of further European integration, some ‘pro-Europeans’
tend to oppose them. However, because of the way in which decisions taken in referendums have been
overturned or, in the case of the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by Dutch and French voters,
bypassed, many Eurosceptics also see referendums on EU-related issues as discredited.
130
In Germany, referendums at the national level are permitted in two special cases. The first is in relation to proposed reconfiguration
of the country’s Länder, or states. For example, a referendum was held in 1951 on whether to merge three existing states into what became
Baden-Württemburg. The second would be on adopting a new constitution under Article 146 of the existing Basic Law. However, referendums
are widely used at the local and state level. See Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (undated), ‘Direkte Demokratie’ [Direct democracy],
https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/handwoerterbuch-politisches-system/202013/direkte-demokratie?p=all.
131
Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, p. 221.
132
See Kriesi, H. (2005), Direct Democratic Choice: The Swiss Experience, Oxford: Lexington.
133
Helen Thompson on the Talking Politics podcast, 30 January 2020, https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2020/218-are-we-losing-
faith-in-democracy.
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Notwithstanding these cultural differences and disillusionment about referendums on EU issues,
the demand for direct democracy seems to be increasing across Europe – particularly, but not only,
from populist figures, movements and parties. This is in part because of the development of digital
technology, which has created the possibility of dramatically expanding the use of referendums.
Historically, direct democracy was widely seen as being possible only in small city-states like Athens
(though the Swiss case challenges this assumption). But as we have seen, some now see the possibility
of using digital technology to scale up direct democracy and create a kind of ‘virtual agora’. Others
have suggested that what Europe needs is ‘a digital version of Swiss democracy’.134
The first key question here is which issues referendums should be applied to. Referendums seem
to work best where there is a simple choice between two alternatives, each of which can be easily
implemented by parliament. The debate about Brexit in the UK in the three years since the referendum
in June 2016 illustrates this. What may have seemed like a simple binary choice between leaving
the EU and remaining in it turned out to be a much more complex choice between different kinds of
relationship with the EU. Moreover, leaving the EU is far from straightforward. Thus, a referendum
meant to resolve a nationally divisive issue in a way that cut across political lines instead deepened
division and caused paralysis for several years.
A second question is whether referendums should be advisory or binding. Binding referendums
are not easily compatible with the structures of representative democracy and have the potential to
undermine it, though the experience of Switzerland suggests they can work if they are well integrated
into a system of representative democracy. Conversely, if referendums are merely advisory, and can
be easily rejected by governments and parliaments, they risk being discredited. It can be particularly
dangerous when there is a lack of clarity or agreement about whether a referendum is binding –
as the example of the UK’s referendum on EU membership again arguably illustrates.
In addition to referendums, agenda initiatives have become increasingly popular in Europe –
confusingly, these are often also referred to as citizens’ initiatives. In 2012 Estonia created a People’s
Assembly to crowdsource proposals for reforming its democratic processes.135
The assembly generated
over 2,000 proposals, 15 of which were submitted to parliament. Parliament accepted three of the
proposals and partially implemented four more. One of the laws passed created an ongoing right
for citizen-led proposals to be submitted to parliament through a new platform, Rahvaalgatus. Also
in 2012, Finland passed a Citizens Initiative Act, which enables citizens to submit legal proposals
to parliament once they have 50,000 signatures. This process led to the introduction of equalmarriage
legislation.
At the European level, the European Citizens’ Initiative aims to enable EU citizens to participate
directly in the development of EU policies.136
But the mechanism is widely seen as having been
a disappointment. Since it was introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, only four petitions so
far have reached the threshold of 1 million signatures required for the European Commission to take
action – and none has yet led to a legislative proposal. This illustrates that agenda initiatives, rather
134
Reutemann, T. (2019), ‘Swiss-Style decentralized direct democracy’, submission to Chatham House Commission on Democracy and Technology
in Europe, 10 April 2019, https://demtech.chathamhouse.org/submission/swiss-style-decentralized-direct-democracy/.
135
Eesti Koostöö Kogu (undated), ‘People’s Assembly’, https://www.kogu.ee/en/activity/peoples-assembly/; Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan
(2017), Digital Democracy, pp. 34–35; and Involve (undated), ‘Estonian People’s Assembly and Rahvaalgatus’, https://www.involve.org.uk/
resources/case-studies/estonian-peoples-assembly-and-rahvaalgatus.
136
European Union (undated), ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’, https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative.
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than undermining the existing system of decision-making as referendums can, run the risk of failing
to have an impact at all. In the worst case, agenda initiatives can resemble a petition which rulers can
choose to accept or reject, as in the pre-democratic era.
Deliberative democracy
Deliberative democracy is a much more recent idea, which has emerged in theory and in practice
only in the past several decades. Influenced by the work of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas,
it is based on the insight that the quality of political discourse matters in a democracy.137
Advocates
of deliberative methods such as James Fishkin argue that citizens must be able to weigh ‘competing
arguments for policies or candidates in a context of mutually civil and diverse discussion in which
people can decide on the merits of good information’.138
The idea of deliberative democracy has
become particularly popular in the past few years against the background of widespread concerns
about the way in which social media may be debasing political discourse.
The hope is that deliberative methods may provide a way not just of elevating debate but also of
bridging the gap between elites and the public that characterizes much of politics. Advocates argue
that such methods can achieve this without abandoning the idea of expertise or lowering the quality
of decision-making: ‘Popular deliberative institutions are grounded in the public’s values and
concerns, so the voice they magnify is not the voice of the elites. But that voice is usually also, after
deliberation, more evidence-based and reflective of the merits of the major policy arguments.’139
It is also claimed that deliberative democracy reduces polarization – the process of deliberation
can induce reflection and lead participants to change their minds.140
Deliberative methods have usually involved the creation of a ‘mini-public’ – a small group of citizens
that is representative of the population as a whole – that meets in person to deliberate on a particular
political issue in an organized setting. The earliest version of this was the ‘deliberative opinion poll’,
which Fishkin first described in 1988. Other forms of deliberative democracy include citizens’ juries
and citizens’ assemblies. The idea behind each of these methods is that, if the group is genuinely
representative and deliberates under the right conditions, ‘its considered judgments after deliberation
should represent what the larger population would think if somehow those citizens could engage
in similarly good conditions for considering the issue’.141
Citizens’ assemblies are now by far the most popular form of deliberative democracy – so much so
they have become almost synonymous with it. They bring together a small group of citizens – usually
around 100 or fewer – to discuss a particular issue and make recommendations. Citizens’ assemblies
are often chaired by an academic, politician or judge, and receive evidence from experts in much the
way that parliamentary committees do. Advocates of the approach say that, if they are well organized,
137
On the influence of Habermas, see Nolte (2012), Was ist Demokratie?, p. 396 ff.
138
Fishkin, J. S. and Mansbridge, J. (2017), ‘Introduction’, Daedalus, Summer 2017, pp. 6–13, here p. 7, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/
full/10.1162/DAED_x_00442.
139
Ibid.
140
Dryzek, J. S. (2000), Deliberative democracy and beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
141
Fishkin and Mansbridge (2017), ‘Introduction’, p. 9.
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such forums are a uniquely powerful tool for increasing participation in decision-making and creating
a political debate that is ‘future-’, ‘fact-’ and ‘other-regarding’.142
Citizens’ assemblies have also been
endorsed by the Financial Times.143
Advocates of citizens’ assemblies often point to the example of Ireland, where the format has
twice been used for constitutional reform. Between 2012 and 2014, a constitutional convention
including 66 members of the public alongside 33 representatives chosen by political parties discussed
the Irish constitution. The convention recommended the legalization of same-sex marriage, which,
following a referendum in 2015, became enshrined in law.144
Between 2016 and 2018, a citizens’
assembly consisting of 99 members of the public considered various questions, including abortion,
fixed-term parliaments, referendums, population ageing and climate change. After 12 weekends of
discussion, it voted to recommend ending a constitutional ban on abortion; in 2018, again following
a referendum, the proposed change became law.
Citizens’ assemblies have also been used in a number of other European countries. Perhaps the best
known is the Icelandic National Assemblies, which consisted of around 1,000 randomly selected
citizens who met in 2009 and again in 2010 to agree a set of core values that would form the basis
of a new constitution, though this was ultimately never adopted. The British and French governments
have both also recently established citizens’ assemblies to discuss climate change. In the UK, there
are a plethora of other citizens’ assemblies at the national level and in various cities and regions.145
Citizens’ assemblies have also been tried in Austria, Belgium, Poland and Spain. The above-mentioned
Estonian People’s Assembly included ‘deliberation days’ and is therefore also sometimes considered
a citizens’ assembly.146
Unlike with direct democracy, deliberative approaches have so far been largely
analogue. The intensive interaction that gives deliberative democracy its value
is difficult to replicate online.
Unlike with direct democracy, deliberative approaches have so far been largely analogue. The
intensive interaction that gives deliberative democracy its value is difficult to replicate online. But
one could imagine a kind of online citizens’ assembly, which could involve far more people than an
in-person assembly – particularly as technology evolves – and, assuming it were representative, even
obviate the need for a ‘mini-public’. An innovative experiment in online deliberation is vTaiwan,
a consultation process that was developed by the Taiwanese government together with g0v, a digital
activist group, following the Sunflower Movement of student/civic protests in 2014.147
The process,
which uses the opinion-mapping tool Pol.is, has been deployed to debate a series of complex issues
and has led to a number of policy changes.
142
Clodagh Harris in ‘What Democracy Needs Now’, RSA chief executive’s lecture 2018, London, 2 July 2018, https://www.thersa.org/
events/2018/07/what-democracy-needs-now.
143
Financial Times (2019), ‘Deliberative democracy is just what politics needs’, 11 August 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/6bc199c8-b836-
11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea203.
144
The Irish constitution requires that changes to the constitution be put to a referendum. Thus deliberative and direct democracy were combined
in a two-stage process. See also the section above on direct democracy.
145
The British organization Involve has a useful ‘tracker’ of citizens’ assemblies in the UK. See Hughes, T. (2019), ‘Keeping up with the citizens’
assemblies’, 28 June 2019, https://www.involve.org.uk/resources/blog/news/keeping-citizens-assemblies.
146
See Jonsson, M. (2015), ‘Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems – The Case of the Estonian Citizens’ Assembly Process’, Journal
of Public Deliberation, Volume 11, Issue 1, https://www.publicdeliberation.net/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1311&context=jpd.
147
See Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan (2017), Digital Democracy, pp. 29–33.
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As with referendums, one of the principal challenges is to identify which issues are suited to
deliberative methods. Citizens’ assemblies seem to work well where the issue is clearly identifiable and
the answers do not require deep understanding of policies and legal restrictions – often, this means
a local issue that directly affects people’s lives. But as Richard Youngs has argued, it is not yet clear
‘whether participatory initiatives can move to a higher political level and contribute meaningfully to
democratic revitalization’.148
The Irish experience suggests that, when citizens’ assemblies are scaled
up, they may work best on conscience issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage. But it may also
be possible to use them for other issues such as those associated with education and healthcare.
A second challenge is to ‘systematize’ deliberative methods.149
This revolves around the question of
how exactly deliberation should influence policy, and whether recommendations should be binding.
Few experts advocate binding recommendations. But if citizens’ assemblies are merely advisory,
and do not translate into policy change, they may become indistinguishable from old-fashioned
consultations and will likely do little to deepen democracy. In this respect, it is striking that China has
also used deliberative methods such as citizens’ assemblies, which suggests the approach is compatible
with authoritarianism as well as democracy and can limit democracy as well as deepening it.150
Towards an integrated democracy
Direct democracy and deliberative democracy both have the potential to help reinvigorate democracy
in Europe. But much depends on how exactly they are used, and how each fits into other democratic
processes and institutions. The challenge, therefore, is to integrate new elements of direct and
deliberative democracy into the existing system of representative government. Much research now
focuses on how to ‘evaluate democratic innovations as complementary parts of a political system’.151
Integration may involve complex permutations of elements of direct and deliberative democracy
and of online and offline forms of participation for different kinds of issues and at different levels
of democracy in Europe.
The Irish experience suggests that citizens’ assemblies and referendums can work well when
used together. Other experiments around Europe also combine direct and deliberative democracy.
As mentioned, the Estonian People’s Assembly included ‘deliberation days’ as part of its process.
In France, the Parlement et Citoyens website brings together elected politicians and citizens to discuss
policy and collaboratively draft legislation.152
Many of the experiments in participatory budgeting that
are taking place in cities around Europe, such as Decide Madrid, allow citizens to debate and propose
legislation as well as vote on local investment projects.153
As with the experiments by so-called digital parties, the issue of who participates in direct and
deliberative democracy potentially raises difficult questions about inclusivity. There is a lack of data
on this, often because of a fear that data collection would deter participation. For example, Better
148
Youngs, R. (2019), ‘Can Citizen Participation Really Revive European Democracy?’, Carnegie Europe, 30 July 2019,
https://carnegieeurope.eu/2019/07/30/can-citizen-participation-really-revive-european-democracy-pub-79588.
149
Farrell, D. M., Suiter, J and Harris, C. (2019), ‘“Systematizing” constitutional deliberation: the 2016–18 citizens’ assembly in Ireland’, Irish
Political Studies, 34:1, pp. 113–23. There has been a ‘systemic turn’ in research on deliberation in recent years. See Jonsson (2015), ‘Democratic
Innovations in Deliberative Systems’.
150
See Jun, M. (2012), ‘Accountability without elections’, in Leonard, M. (ed.) (2012), China 3.0, London: European Council on Foreign Relations,
pp. 80–86, https://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR66_CHINA_30_final.pdf; and He, B. and Warren, M. E. (2017), ‘Authoritarian Deliberation in
China’, Daedalus, Summer 2017, pp. 155–66, https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00454.
151
Jonsson (2015), ‘Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems’.
152
Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan (2017), Digital Democracy, pp. 24–28.
153
Ibid., pp. 47–51.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
36 | Chatham House
Reykjavik, a platform for generating ideas, abandoned the collection of data on age and gender after
participation slumped.154
But what data there is suggests that often participants are people who are
already engaged in politics in other ways. For example, the Estonian People’s Assembly found its
participants were likely to be ‘educated, professional, right-wing males’.155
That said, there is some
evidence that young people do participate, so to the extent that the crisis of liberal democracy is
generational, these initiatives may help.
Even if these new elements of direct and deliberative democracy can be made to work, the extent
to which they can help solve the broader crisis of liberal democracy is not yet clear. The evidence
so far suggests a cautious assessment is advisable. In particular, regardless of whether populism is
understood as a cause or symptom of the crisis, the introduction of alternative forms of democracy
does not seem to do much to stop its rise. For example, Estonia’s experiments with direct and
deliberative democracy are generally considered to be among the most innovative and successful in
Europe.156
Nevertheless, as Youngs points out, this did not prevent the far-right Conservative People’s
Party of Estonia (EKRE) from becoming the third-biggest party in the Estonian parliament in national
elections in March 2019.157
154
Ibid., p. 44.
155
Ibid., p. 35.
156
Eesti Koostöö Kogu (undated), ‘People’s Assembly’. See also Jonsson (2015), ‘Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems.
157
Youngs (2019), ‘Can Citizen Participation Really Revive European Democracy?’.
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37 | Chatham House
7. Conclusion
This research paper has argued that the crisis of liberal democracy cannot be blamed on the
development and prevalence of digital technology, as is sometimes asserted or more often implied.
Rather, the crisis has deeper causes about which there is little consensus, with views dependent
on normative assumptions about democracy that are ultimately political. Nevertheless, it is clear
that digital technology is transforming society, and in particular the public sphere, in ways that are
not yet fully understood. The development of technology should not be seen as an irresistible force
that cannot be shaped. At the same time, attempts to harness digital innovations in democracy will
necessarily take place under conditions of uncertainty.
Digital technology is still relatively new, and European societies are only at the beginning of
figuring out how to adapt to it. Moreover, adaptation to technological change is an ongoing process.
As technology continues to evolve and its development perhaps accelerates in the coming decades,
the way in which democracy functions will need to be updated accordingly. Above all, this will be
a challenge for electoral and media regulators, who will need to maintain the state’s ability to hold
fair and free elections and to guarantee the existence of meaningful political discourse. They will also
need to be careful not to overreach – the expansion of the power of unelected institutions in recent
decades may have contributed to the current crisis.
At present, there is much discussion about how to regulate political campaigning on digital
platforms.158
But because little conclusive evidence exists about the impact of social media on
democracy, there is also little agreement on how exactly digital campaigning can and should be
regulated. In particular, attention currently focuses on how to prevent the spread of misinformation
and disinformation through social media.159
But even to decide which content should be categorized
as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ is a challenge. It is also far from clear that much apparently
populist content can or should be reduced to factually incorrect information or lies. Another important
issue that is attracting attention is how to balance freedom of expression with the need to protect
individuals from hate speech.160
In response to public pressure, social media companies have begun to take various steps to regulate
political content on their platforms. Twitter has banned political advertising altogether – though how
exactly to define ‘political’ in this context, and whether removing such advertising is good or bad
from a democratic standpoint, remains unclear. Google has restricted ‘micro-targeting’, which is the
targeting of advertisements at users based on their political affiliation or interests. This step has been
158
For a discussion of these issues in the UK, with recommendations about how the regulation of political campaigning can be updated,
see Naik, R. (2019), ‘Political Campaigning: The Law, The Gaps and the Way Forward’, Oxford Technology and Elections Commission,
October 2019, https://oxtec.oii.ox.ac.uk/publication/legal-framework/.
159
See, for example, Ignatidou, S. (2019), EU–US Cooperation on Tackling Disinformation, Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of
International Affairs, https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/eu-us-cooperation-tackling-disinformation; and Jones, K. (2019), Online
Disinformation and Political Discourse: Applying a Human Rights Framework, Research Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs,
https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/online-disinformation-and-political-discourse-applying-human-rights-framework. In contrast
to ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ implies malicious intent.
160
On hate speech, see, for example, Vidgen, B., Margetts, H. and Harris, A. (2019), How much online abuse is there? A systematic review of
evidence for the UK, Policy Briefing – Summary, The Alan Turing Institute, https://www.turing.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-11/online_abuse_
prevalence_summary_24.11.2019_-_formatted_0.pdf; and Alan Turing Institute (2019), Response of The Alan Turing Institute’s Public Policy
Programme to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and the Home Office’s Online Harms White Paper, https://www.turing.ac.uk/sites/
default/files/2019-07/response_of_the_public_policy_programme_to_the_dcms_and_the_home_offices_online_harms_white_paper.pdf.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
38 | Chatham House
welcomed by the US Federal Election Commission but criticized by political campaigns, which say
that the restriction does not deal with the real problem of disinformation (much of which does not use
micro-targeting) and that it penalizes campaigns that use micro-targeting in a legitimate way.161
To some extent it is inevitable that regulation will always be playing catch-up as technology develops.
But there is also a need for a regulatory framework designed to shape future innovation: to ‘regulate
things and products that do not exist yet’, as the former European commissioner for research, science
and innovation, Carlos Moedas, puts it.162
There is already much discussion of how to ensure that
AI develops in a ‘human-centric’ or socially responsible way – often revolving around maintaining
the ‘human-in-the-loop’ principle. The European Commission has published guidelines for ethical
AI.163
However, it is not clear if these can be enforced, especially for AI development outside the
EU. A specific concern is the possibility that bias on gender or racial lines could be embedded
in future algorithms.
Exactly what form regulation should take, either for existing technology such as social media or in
respect of future technologies, is beyond the scope of this research paper. But as important as the issue
of regulation is, and however the difficult questions around it are ultimately resolved, it is clear that
it will not be enough on its own to tackle the crisis of liberal democracy. Moreover, technology itself
could be part of the solution – whether in helping to revitalize parties, as discussed in Chapter 5, or
in developing the alternative forms of democracy discussed in Chapter 6. Yet as this research paper
has emphasized throughout, there are no simple solutions.
Therefore, in the spirit of what has been called ‘democratic experimentalism’,164
Europeans should
be open to trying different forms of democracy. In this sense, the wide variety of political institutions
and processes that exist in Europe (as examined in Chapter 4) constitute an advantage for reform
prospects rather than a disadvantage. Rather than seeking to make Europe more homogenous, policy
ideas and innovation should concentrate on maintaining this diversity. There is a particular need for
experimentation with direct and deliberative democracy, and for further evaluation of how these
formats can be integrated into the existing institutions and processes of representative democracy
at the local, regional, national and EU levels.
We should not think of democracy in a static way – that is, as a system that
can be perfected once and for all and then simply maintained and defended
against threats.
Experimentation should proceed carefully and cautiously. The political systems of European
countries function holistically, and therefore an element of democracy such as a referendum
or citizens’ assembly that works well in one system may be ineffective or even disastrous when
introduced into another. It may be possible to identify aspects of best practice that are transferable.
But it may also be that experimentation produces findings of use only for the specific context in which
the experiment has taken place. In short, advocates of reform should be open-minded and prepared
161
Corasanti, N. and Rosenberg, M. (2019), ‘Campaigns Say Google Ad Policy Sidesteps Problem of Disinformation’, New York Times,
21 November 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/us/politics/google-ads-disinformation.html.
162
Panel discussion at the Web Summit, Lisbon, 7 November 2019, https://vimeo.com/374953902.
163
European Commission (2019), ‘Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI’, 8 April 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/ethics-
guidelines-trustworthy-ai.
164
Dorf, M. C. and Sabel, C. F. (1998), ‘A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism’, Columbia Law Review, Volume 98, Issue 2, pp. 267–469.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
39 | Chatham House
to change course where necessary. This may be a particular challenge for the EU, because European
integration is conceived as a one-way process and therefore makes the EU more path-dependent than
other polities.
Perhaps most importantly, we should not think of democracy in a static way – that is, as a system
that can be perfected once and for all and then simply maintained and defended against threats.
Democracy has continually evolved since its emergence in the 18th century, in particular with the
gradual extension of the franchise to groups, including women, that had previously been excluded.
One way to think about the current crisis is that another moment may have arrived that requires
democracy to evolve. In particular, citizens may now be demanding a kind of democracy that is more
responsive than the current representative model. The solution is thus not to limit democracy, for
example in response to the threat from perceived populism, but to deepen it further in what Claus
Offe has called the ‘democratization of democracy’.165
165
Offe, C. (2003), Demokratisierung der Demokratie: Diagnosen und Reformvorschläge [Democratization of democracy: diagnoses and proposals
for reform], Frankfurt: Campus.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
40 | Chatham House
About the Project
This research paper is the product of an ongoing project on democracy and technology run by
Chatham House. The project has been guided by a commission of 15 leading figures from around
Europe with expertise in both democracy and technology:
•	 Francesca Bria
•	 Liam Byrne MP
•	 Wendy Hall
•	 Yvonne Hofstetter
•	 Toomas Hendrik Ilves
•	 Cyril Lage
•	 Guillaume Liegey
•	 Adrian Lovett
•	 Helen Margetts
•	 Luuk van Middelaar
•	 Julia Reda
•	 Andreas Rödder
•	 Marietje Schaake
•	 Shahin Vallée
•	 James Williams
The ideas of the commission members helped shape this research paper. However, the views
it expresses are those of the author rather than of the commission as a whole.
During 2019, the project also invited submissions from the public to a series of three
research questions:
1.	 What effect is technology having on democracy in Europe?
2.	 Against the background of social and technological change, how can democracy in Europe
be made more responsive?
3.	 Are there ways in which technology can help revitalize democracy in Europe?
A total of 55 submissions were received, which can be read on the project website:
https://demtech.chathamhouse.org.
In addition, the project invited members of the public to participate in three online working groups,
led in each case by a group leader appointed by the project team at Chatham House. Using Google
Docs, each of the three groups collectively produced an essay in response to one of the research
questions. As with the input by commission members, the submissions and the essays produced
by the three working groups helped inform and shape the analysis in this research paper.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
41 | Chatham House
About the Author
Hans Kundnani is a senior research fellow with the Europe Programme at Chatham House.
Before joining Chatham House in 2018, he was Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall
Fund of the United States, and research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
He is also an associate fellow at the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University. In 2016
he was a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC.
He is the author of The Paradox of German Power (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014), which
has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.
He studied German and philosophy at Oxford University and journalism at Columbia University
in New York, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
The Future of Democracy in Europe
42 | Chatham House
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the commission members for making time to contribute to the project
and for sharing their expertise and insights, which have helped shaped the argument of this paper.
I would also like to thank Areeq Chowdhury, Asta Gudrun Helgadóttir, Catherine Howe, Namita
Kambli and Anthony Zacharzewski, who led the working groups, for their input into the project.
The three peer reviewers provided helpful comments which improved this paper. Robert Cooper also
provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. I am grateful to my colleagues at Chatham House who
have been involved in this project – in particular, Marjorie Buchser, Alina Lyadova, Robin Niblett,
Chloé Prendleloup and Tom Raines. I am especially grateful to Jake Statham for his meticulous and
thoughtful editing. Finally I would like to thank Janus Friis, whose support made this project possible.
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