Innovation, Vol. 15, No.

3, 2002

The European Democratic De cit, the Market and the

Public Space: A Classical Liberal Critique

JOHN MEADOWCROFT

ABSTRACT This article argues that attempts to utilize a Habermasian conception of the public
space as a remedy for the democratic decit deemed to be inherent within the political institutions of the
European Union (EU) are unlikely to prove successful. It is argued that the instrumental goal demanded
of the public space is contrary to the communicative rationality intrinsic to the Habermasian model.
Moreover, the Habermasian conception of the public space as an arena independent of both the market
and the state is non-operational because a public space independent of the market is inconceivable. An
alternative conceptualization of the public space, focusing on the role of the market as a communicative
process, and an alternative remedy for the European democratic decit, focusing on liberal representative
democracy, are proposed.

The assertion that the European Union (EU ) has a democratic de cit has become
commonplace within the academic literature. One proposed solution to this apparent
democratic de cit is to apply the principles and techniques of deliberative democracy.
This is a model of democracy in which citizens meet together in a deliberative forumor
public spaceto engage in an open-ended dialogue that may encompass speci c
questions of public policy as well as discussion of wider questions of values and identities.
The public space is intended to be a forum in which political and economic inequalities
are set aside so that citizens can come together as equals. As such, the public space is
claimed to be an arena beyond the realm of the state and of market relationships and
transactions.
This article argues that a deliberative solution to the EU democratic de cit is unlikely
to prove successful. It will begin with an examination of the democratic de cit frequently
alleged to be present within the EU. It will then explore the concept of the European
public space, before asking what impact the public space can and should have on any
democratic de cit within the institutions of the EU. It is argued that the conceptualiza-
tion of the European public space advanced thus far is internally inconsistent and omits
an important dimension of European civil society: the market. The market, it is argued,
is a communicative process that does not encounter the epistemological dif culties that
would plague any attempt to create a Europe-wide discourse within a European public
space. It will be concluded that the solution to the European democratic de cit lies in
the introduction of the principles of liberal representative democracy to the institutions
of the EU.
ISSN 1351-1610 print/ISSN 1469-8412 online/02/030181-12
2002 Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences
DOI: 10.1080/13511610220000276 03
182 John Meadowcroft

The European democratic de cit

As Lord ( 2001, p. 642) has noted, academic debate concerning the EU has been
dominated by the notion that the EU is a political system in democratic de cit, yet
there is no agreed de nition of the term democratic de cit and no consensus that a
supranational political institution such as the EU must be democratically accountable in
the same way as national political institutions. A democratic de cit can be said to exist,
however, when citizens are unable or feel unable to hold to account an institution that
has law-making and tax-raising powers over them. It is noteworthy that while opportu-
nities for popular participation within the institutions of the EU are extremely limited,
those opportunities that do exist for the European public to hold the EU to account
principally elections to the European parliamentare under-utilized. Less than half of
the European population voted in the 1999 elections to the European parliament, despite
the fact that voting was compulsory in a number of countries. Indeed, on a continent
where electoral participation is usually high, less than half of voters turned out in Austria,
Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Sweden and the UK, while among those
who did vote substantial numbers gave support to speci cally anti-European parties
(Mathers, 2001 ). The legitimacy of political institutions that cannot demonstrate the
support of their populace will inevitably be called into question. Therefore, as Bellamy
and Castiglione ( 2000, p. 65) have concluded, it can be said that the EU has failed to
acquire the trappings of democratic decency.
These concerns regarding the existence of a democratic de cit within the EU have led
to recent attempts to conceptualize a European public space as a possible panacea for
the democratic de cit. The absence of a basic consensus as to what the core values of
the EU should be, what constitutes European identity and how democratic accountability
should be achieved, have led to calls for a deliberative process to discover such a set of
legitimizing values (Eriksen and Fossum, 2000; Giorgi et al., 2001; Lord, 2001 ). It is
contended that the democratic de cit may be explained in part by the absence of a
European public space informing a European conception of citizenship: a European
public space populated with citizens subscribing to a form of European collective
identity could overcome both the actual and the perceived democratic de cit (Giorgi
et al., 2001, p. 74 ).
The contention that a democratic de cit may be attributed to an absence of collective
identity requires some justi cation. It should be noted that concern about the existence
of a democratic de cit within contemporary political institutions is not con ned to the
European stage, but is common to most modern democracies (Putnam et al., 2000 ). It is
dif cult, therefore, to conclude that there is a causal relationship between the absence of
collective identity and low political participation. On the contrary, low levels of political
ef cacy within the EU may be principally attributable to the fact that only one of the
three main institutions of the EU, the European parliament, is directly elected and
therefore democratically accountable. This situation has arisen, as Bellamy and Warleigh
(1998, p. 453 ) have noted, in large part because the EU evolved through a process in
which a utilitarian goalthe provision of public welfare[was] seen to be best met
through the process of elite-led, regional uni cation. The European project has long
been pursued by European political elites, committed to leading rather than following
their populations, and with more concern for advancing their own view of what
constituted the European public good than with ensuring democratic accountability, who
now nd that only a minority of their populations have travelled with them on their
journey (Chryssochoou, 1998; Rosamond, 2000 ).
 The European Democratic Decit 183

Conceptualizing the public space

Proposals for a deliberative solution to the European democratic de cit draw heavily on
the work of the social theorist Ju rgen Habermas and the idea that discourse within a
public space can legitimize political institutions (see, for example, Eriksen and Fossum,
2000; Giorgi et al., 2001 ). Giorgi et al. ( 2001, p. 74 ) describe such a public space as an
institutionally delimited space of citizen interaction, that, in principle is independent of
both the market and the state. The public space, then, is a discursive as well as an
institutional arena where individuals will relate to each other not in terms of market
transactions, nor in terms of power relations, but as politically equal citizens. It is
anticipated that the discourse process will lead participants within the public space to lay
aside their own self-interest or narrow group interests and instead adopt a public
interest perspective (Fllesdal, 2000, pp. 91 92; Giorgi et al. 2001, p. 74).
This de nition of the public space, then, bears the imprint of Habermass (1984, 1990 )
theory of communicative rationality. That is, the public space is intended to be an arena
where all citizens meet to deliberate and reach policy solutions that are not imposed from
above by those with claims to expert status or in possession of superior technocratic
knowledge. This de nition of the public space can be seen as an example of a
deliberative model of democracy, a concept of democracy that has been de ned by
Stoker (1997, p. 166 ) as a process that should involve reasoning, open debate and
re ections on the opinions of others so that during the course of deliberation new
positions and understandings will emerge. This deliberative process, as Giorgi et al.
( 2001, p. 74) have described, is not closed in principle or in practice to groups, to issues,
or to modes of discourse. The Habermasian public space, then, is intended to be a place
where all forms of discourse are included and none are excluded at the behest of political
elites.
Deliberative democracy, as its name suggests, involves the direct participation of
citizens in deliberation and discussion so as to circumvent the weaknesses deemed to be
inherent within traditional representative democracy. These pathologies include the gap
between representatives and the represented implied by representative democracy, the
existence of social and economic inequalities that are said to compromise formal political
equality, and low levels of citizen participation in existing democratic structures that are
said to call into question the legitimacy and democratic mandate of those institutions. By
ensuring both quantitatively more opportunities for citizen participation and qualitatively
deeper citizen participation within those opportunities, deliberative democracy offers a
thicker or more wholesome version of democracy than that implied by traditional
representative structures. Deliberative democracy, then, offers an implicit (and sometimes
explicit) critique of the failure of liberal representative democracy to deliver its promise
of democratic empowerment (Barber, 1984; Aars and Offerdal, 2000; Dryzck, 2000,
Smith and Wales, 2000 ).
The tension between the bottom-up model of communicative rationality envisaged by
Habermas and the top-down instrumental role envisaged for the European public sphere
by its advocates should be immediately apparent. The crucial element of Habermasian
communicative rationality is that deliberative forums should not be dominated by elites
to ensure the imposition of their own instrumental rationality, yet this is exactly the role
that is envisaged for the European public space: it is to perform the instrumental function
required of it by a political elite, namely to make good the democratic de cit deemed to
be inherent within EU political institutions. The Habermasian public space is intended
to be a forum in which political institutions are legitimized because the nature and scope
of those institutions are not pre-determined, but arise spontaneously from the deliberative
184 John Meadowcroft

process. Hence, institutions attain legitimacy from their origins in popular deliberation. If
a European public space is to facilitate the instrumental goal of legitimizing existing
institutional arrangements, then the Habermasian model of a public space as a forum for
communicative rationality is an inappropriate medium for achieving such a goal (or any
other pre-ordained end).
The Habermasian model of the public space is not only inconsistent with the
attainment of a political outcome pre-ordained by elite actors, it also presents a seriously
de cient conceptualization of the public space because it seeks to exclude the market
from its conceptualization. Any conception of the public space, or civil society, that seeks
to exclude the economic dimension, must necessarily present an emasculated vision of
that public space.

The impossible space? Europe without economics

The conception of the public space as an arena independent of both the state and the
market is an approach that is not restricted to Habermasian scholars, but is endemic to
the contemporary literature on European civil society and public space (see, for example,
Janoski, 1998; Warleigh, 2001 ). The assertion that a public space independent of the
market can be identi ed is frequently made but is rarely subjected to thorough critical
interrogation. It is the contention of this article that a public space outside of the market
is inconceivable and that many of the semantic and de nitional dif culties that plague
the literature result from this attempt to delineate public space in precisely these
non-operational terms.1
The exclusion of the economic dimension in the search for a European public space
should immediately sound alarm bells, given the importance of economics and economic
integration to the whole European project. What we now know as the European Union
began not only as a political and a defence project, but also as an economic project, and
the key stages of its development have all been economic in character: the creation of
the European Coal and Steel Community, the common market, the single trade zone
and the single currency. Indeed, as war between the member states of the Union has
become a distant memory and an even more distant prospect, the economic dimension
of the European project has become ever more central.
It should not, therefore, be too contentious to state that the fundamental driving force
behind European political integration in recent decades has been economic consider-
ations, initially in the shape of the creation of a single trading zone based upon the free
movement of labour and capital, and now in moves towards more complete economic
and monetary union. The single European currency is without doubt the highest phase
yet reached in the European project and one of the most important political develop-
ments in modern European history. The movement of people in search of employment
within the single trading zone may be one of the few areas where a Europe-wide public
space has already begun to develop, albeit far more hesitantly than the original architects
of the free movement of labour wished and envisaged (Tsoukalis, 1997 ).
Utilizing a conception of the public space, or civil society, that excludes the economic
dimension not only disregards arguably the most important feature of European
integration, the exclusion of the market from a conception of the public space also
removes a crucial component of any civil society: the arena in which citizens trade freely
in goods and services. The concept of the public space can be traced back to the Ancient
Greek agora and, as Madison (1998) has described, the agora was the Greek marketplace;
a free space where the Greeks traded ideasthe agora was the principal discursive forum
within the cityas well as goods and services. The public process in which ideas were
 The European Democratic Decit 185

formulated, challenged and debated, was, therefore, the same process in which more
worldly goods were bought, sold and exchanged. For the Greeks, the agora was a truly
public space in which both political and economic discourse took place and in which the two
were indivisible. The traditional concept of the public space, then, was of an arena
outside the realm of the state, but rmly embedded within the market.
The competitive trade in goods and services, just like the competitive trade in ideas,
is not dependent upon the activity or authority of the state, and should, therefore, be
rmly located within civil society. Moreover, where totalitarian states have sought to
monopolize political participation and constrict civil society, restriction of the free trade
of goods and servicethe markethas usually preceded such action. Thus, just as civil
society is inconceivable without freedom of speech to allow open competition in ideas,
so civil society must also be inconceivable without open competition in goods and
services. A civil society simply cannot exist where citizens are not free to trade. Indeed,
it could be argued that recent moves within the UK to increase turnout in local elections
by placing polling booths in supermarkets represents a recognition of the importance of
the commercial sphere in public participation, as well as perhaps being indicative of the
enduring nature of the Ancient concept of the agora. An operational de nition of the
European public space must, therefore, include the market.

The market as a communicative process

The claims made for the public space and communicative rationality rest on a set of
assumptions about knowledge and its communication. That is, it is assumed that
participation in a deliberative forum is the most ef cacious way for individuals to
communicate with one another and in doing so to learn about the needs and ideas of
others. As Eriksen ( 2000, p. 54 ) has described, the public space is a forum in which
everybody is entitled to speak, without any limitations, whether on themes, items,
questions, time or resources. It is assumed, then, that verbal discourse is the most
appropriate medium for people to articulate their values and interests. While at rst sight
this may seem an uncontroversial assumption, it is important to consider the pathologies
of such a discourse process. Indeed, the essence of the classical liberal defence of the
market is that the market is a communicative process that can enable individuals to
overcome the epistemological limits of verbal communication.
The Greek concept of agora, the arena where goods, services and ideas are traded,
should alert us to the fact that the market has an important communicative function.
While many of the formal models of neo-classical economics do represent the market as
a huge calculating machine that sends out signals to which individuals must respond,
these models present a seriously de cient view of how the market operates and the
function it performs within society. An alternative conception of the market begins from
a view similar to that proposed by the Nobel Prize winning development economist
Amartya Sen. Sen (1999, p. 61) has likened markets to conversations between people.
To be generically opposed to markets, Sen has argued, is tantamount to being generically
opposed to conservations between people. Sens argument comes close to capturing the
essence of the market as a communicative process.
A much deeper conception of the communicative role played by the market has been
proposed by scholars working within the tradition of the Austrian school of economics.2
For economists of the Austrian school, the market is principally a process that communicates
information. All human action, it is contended, takes place in conditions of chronic
uncertainty and with incomplete information. The future must always be unknowable
because it is dependent upon the actions of human individuals whose behaviour will be
186 John Meadowcroft

determined by their subjective (and frequently erroneous ) perceptions, so that their

actions can never be predicted with absolute certainty. The function performed by the
market is to enable individuals to overcome these epistemological barriers and to make
and pursue purposeful plans (Kirzner, 1992, 2000; ODriscoll and Rizzo, 1996 ).
The market is able to co-ordinate the actions and plans of many dispersed individuals
who possess incomplete information and face chronic uncertainty via the price mechan-
ism. The value of different goods and services is determined by the price at which
producers are willing to produce them and consumers are prepared to consume them.
This information does not exist in any objective form, but can only be derived from the
price heuristically achieved in the marketplace. The price of any good or service, then,
simply communicates its relative value to potential consumers and producers. Armed with
this knowledge (prices), individuals within the marketplace are able to overcome the
epistemological barriers inherent in any complex society. In a market economy, for
example, the knowledge that a job pays a particular salary will inform our decision as
to whether or not to apply for it by providing information about its relative importance
and status, and what other plans (house purchases, holidays, etc.) we will be able to make
should our applicable prove successful. This does not, of course, imply that prices are
always correct. A good or service can be over- or under-priced, though an incorrect price
also communicates information, ultimately leading to a correction or the withdrawal of
the good or service from the market (ODriscoll and Rizzo, 1996, p. 39 ).
The information that the market communicates, then, is necessarily subjective and
frequently tacit. That is, the price that consumers are willing to pay for a good or a
service, and the price at which producers are willing to provide a good or a service, is
the product of the subjective perceptions of the individuals concerned. No price is or can
be objectively determined by some mysterious non-human force. Thus, in the words of
F. A. Hayek, the only Austrian to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for economics,
social knowledge never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the
dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the
separate individuals possess (Hayek, 1948, p. 77 ).
Social knowledge, therefore, is necessarily subjective, fragmented and diffuse. It cannot
be comprehended in its entirety by any one mind or group of minds working together
because such an entire, cohesive block of knowledge that could possibly be perceived in
this way simply does not exist. The ef cacy of the market in achieving social co-ordi-
nation, that is, enabling individuals to form and to act upon their own plans, lies in its
ability to communicate this subjective and dispersed information to countless numbers of
disparate individuals, the great majority of whom will have never met nor spoken.
The market is also able to generate and therefore to communicate knowledge that
would not otherwise exist. Prices represent the subjective preferences and values of
consumers and producers, yet without the market process that generates prices this
information would not exist. The market, then, is able to communicate dispersed and
fragmented knowledge, and to overcome the existence of sheer ignorance. That is, our
ignorance of information that does not yet exist and therefore cannot be known.
Competition in the marketplace enables a creative discovery process to take place in
which producers and consumers discover information (prices) about goods and service of
which they were previously ignorant because the knowledge did not previously exist. The
information required simply cannot be generated by other, non-competitive means, such
as rational calculation or conscious deliberation, because such methods must rely on the
existence of an objective body of knowledge from which to calculate or to deliberate
(Hayek, 1978 ).
 The European Democratic Decit 187

The market, then, is not simply a huge adding machine that calculates prices. More
precisely, it is a vast web that communicates an enormous array of price signals and in
doing so the market generates and distributes knowledge and information. As Horwitz ( 2001 ) has
described, the market is one collection of institutions, in which, and through which,
individuals continually hone their understandings of the world and gradually improve the
accuracy and detail of their mental maps. Clearly, if the public space is an arena from
which no mode of discourse is to be excluded, then such a space can only be successfully
envisaged if it encompasses a social institution with the epistemological and communica-
tive power of the market. Moreover, once the epistemological basis of the market is
appreciated, its advantages over other forms of social communication become readily
apparent.

The market, language and communication

For theorists of the Austrian school, the social institution that the market most closely
resembles is language. As Yeager (1998, p. 20 ) has noted: Markets convey information
through prices in ways that resemble how language conveys information. Similarly, the
market, like a language, has not been rationally designed by one mind or group of minds
working together, but has evolved over many centuries and continues to do so.3 Markets
and languages, then, are both spontaneous orders, the result, according to Hayek
(1967a ), after Adam Ferguson, of human action, but not of human design. Both are
social phenomena that could not have come into existence without the purposeful actions
of individual men and women, yet neither is the product of the conscious design of
individual men and women.
An individual does not have to be conscious of how the market or a language works
in order to utilize its bene ts. As Hayek (1967b, p. 43 ) noted, small children are able to
use language in accordance with the rules of grammar and idiom of which they are
wholly unaware, and, indeed, only learn those rules after they have verbally mastered
the language to the point that the rules can be explicitly communicated. Thus, as
Wittgenstein (1922, p. 22) wrote, it is possible to speak a language capable of expressing
every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning
is. Just as it is not necessary to understand the laws of physics in order to ride a bicycle,
nor to understand the workings of the internal combustion engine in order to drive a car,
the market and language are examples of complex phenomena that we may utilize
without having to fully understand or comprehend them in their totality.
Despite the undoubted centrality of language to the evolution and development of
human thought (Hayek, 1952, 1967b; Polanyi, 1962), the market has a number of
distinct advantages over language as a communicative process. The rst and perhaps
most obvious advantage of the market over language as a means of communicating
information is that the market is not limited by linguistic boundaries. One potential
obstacle that a Europe-wide conception of the public space de ned in terms of
deliberative democracy must face is the question of the many languages spoken within
the continent. Europe is, of course, a continent divided by a number of languages that
are in turn tightly bound up with questions of national identity. It is not clear how open
and equal discourse could take place in a European public space where many of the
participants would be unable to communicate directly. While translators can, of course,
be employed, it would seem reasonable to suggest that polyglots, or the speakers of the
most common languages, would be at a distinct advantage within the discourse process
in comparison to mono-linguists or the speakers of minority languages.
188 John Meadowcroft

A distinct advantage of prices as a means of communicating information is that prices

are a universal language that is easily understood by all and is rarely subject to
misinterpretation. The market has communicated the prices for goods and services across
the world for many thousands of years between people who not only never meet in
person, but who could not communicate directly if they ever did meet face to face. Prices, of
course, are not simply statements of value necessary to economic calculation; they also
represent the relative importance of different goods and services to different individuals,
and therefore represent and communicate those individuals relative values. The market,
then, has important advantages over language as a means of communicating knowledge
of individual ideas, values and interests.
More importantly, communication via any deliberative process, such as that envisaged
within a Habermasian public space, would be limited to the cognitive abilities of the
individual minds involved. The knowledge that could be utilized in such a forum
therefore would be limited to what those involved could intellectually comprehend. Such
a deliberative process would inevitably be constrained, whereas, as noted above, for the
market to work participants are not required to comprehend anything beyond their own
subjectively de ned self-interest, and even this may be an extremely basic comprehen-
sion. The success or failure of decisions reached by conscious deliberation will largely
depend on the quality or quantity of the information utilized by participants in the
deliberative process, whereas the market functions regardless of the epistemological
shortcomings of market participants. Moreover, the pro t and loss inherent in market
transactions enables individuals to heuristically learn about the success or failure of
different courses of action. It is not clear how similar feedback would be attained in a
deliberative or discursive forum (Kirzner, 1992, 2000; ODriscoll and Rizzo, 1996;
Pennington, 2001, 2002).

The public space and the public interest

In the Habermasian public space it is anticipated that the process of open dialogue
among equals will lead participants to set aside their own self-interest and instead adopt
standpoints consistent with the public interest or the common good. Given the epistemo-
logical pathologies that any deliberative process will encounter, it is not clear how citizens
are to know what actions or plans are consistent with the public interestor, indeed,
what the public interest is. As Pennington ( 2002, p. 199 ) has described, in an uncertain
world it is dif cult enough for people to comprehend their own interests, let alone the
public interest.
Moreover, from an Austrian perspective, an objective public interest simply does not
exist, as all social knowledge is ultimately subjective, that is, determined by the personal
perceptions and actions of individuals. The market enables individuals to pursue their
own subjectively de ned self-interest by utilizing the fragmented and incomplete knowl-
edge that they possess, and the information about the plans and actions of others that
they can glean from the existence of prices within the marketplace. Individuals within the
marketplace do not pursue their self-interest in complete ignorance of, or indifference to,
the interests of others. On the contrary, if they are to be successful, they must take heed
of the preferences and values of others as expressed in prices and pro t opportunities: the
heuristic learning that comes from competition in the marketplace will enable individuals
to take into account the interests of others so that they may achieve their own
self-interested ends.
Of course, if the European public interest could be objectively determinedeither by
a deliberative or any other processthere would logically be little reason to be
 The European Democratic Decit 189

concerned about the existence of a democratic de cit within European political institu-
tions. Should an objective public interest be discerned, we could then simply adopt policy
positions consistent with that public interest. There would be no reason to be concerned
as to whether those positions were reached by democratic means, as long as they
re ected the public interest. To this end, any attempt to discover and then pursue the
public interest may be deemed potentially anti-democratic, as once the public interest has
been determined, logically this can and should be given precedence over popular (or
democratic ) opinion. 4

The democratic de cit, the market and the public space

This article has argued that a workable conceptualization of the European public space,
in which no mode of discourse is excluded, must include the market. The market is an
arena where communication takes place, in which all members of society may participate
and it is not limited by linguistic, cultural or national boundaries. Any conceptualization
of the European public space that excludes the market must fail.
As Pennington ( 2001, 2002 ) has described, although there are important points of
departure, the rejection of technocratic or instrumental rationality inherent in Haber-
masian critiques of traditional representative structures has much in common with the
theoretical and epistemological stance of the classical liberalism associated with contem-
porary Austrian economics. Both approaches suggest that a public space cannot be
constructed in order to achieve an instrumental goal pre-determined by experts or
political elites. Any attempt to do so will simply result in the continued dominance of the
political process by elite actors, ultimately leading to popular disillusionment with the
institutions created to facilitate citizen participation.
As noted above, much of the literature that has informed moves to conceptualize a
European public space is implicitly hostile to liberal representative democracy. It may be
argued, however, that the democratic de cit within the EU does not represent a failure
of liberal representative democracy, but an absence of liberal representative democracy.
The democratic de cit within the EU owes a great deal to the pursuit by political elites
of their own vision of the public good, with little regard to ensuring the presence of
democratic accountability within the institutions they created to pursue that goal. There
is a very real danger that attempts to conceptualize a European public spacedriven as
they are by principally elite concernswill simply compound this error by creating yet
another institutional setting designed to pursue the public good with no means of
ensuring democratic accountability. It seems logical that the rst step to reducing the
democratic de cit within European political institutions is to introduce greater demo-
cratic accountability, via institutional reform of either the European Commission or the
Council of Ministers.
A conceptualization of the European public space that draws on Habermasian social
theory in order to achieve elite goals is not only internally inconsistent but is also destined
to repeat the errors of the past that have led to the present democratic de cit. While
utilizing the language of Habermasian communicative rationality it is in fact an example
of the instrumental rationality Habermass model opposes, in which political elites seek
to mould the political process to achieve their own pre-determined ends. Furthermore,
the idea that participants within the European public space should set aside their own
self-interest and instead pursue the public interest is not only an epistemological
impossibility, but the implication that an objective and technocratic public interest can
be established and pursued may also be judged inherently anti-democratic.
190 John Meadowcroft

This article has argued that an alternative conception of the European public space
and an alternative solution to the European democratic de cit are possible. First, a
workable de nition of the European public space must include the economic dimension
and principally the existence of private markets in which all individuals may participate
as either producers and/or consumers.5 Giorgi et al. ( 2001, p. 74 ) have written that a
democratically viable Europe requires a public space or public sphere. If this is
indeed the case then to nd such a space we need look no further than the market, where
an arena already exists in which European citizens can come together and reframe their
individual self-interest in the light of the interests and values of others. The expansion of
a European public spaceand of European civil societymust mean an expansion of
private markets, not the creation of a new institutional framework that will ultimately
prove to be tantamount to an expansion of the state.
Second, the democratic de cit inherent within European political institutions can be
resolved only by the introduction of greater formal democratic control and accountability
via the use of elected representatives. As long as two of the three principal institutions
of the EU contain no direct democratic accountability the democratic de cit will remain.
The present and ongoing constitutional discussions within the EU present an opportunity
to create institutions more consistent with the principles of liberal democracy and in
doing so to address the democratic de cit. It remains to be seen whether this opportunity
will be taken.
Nearly 60 years ago, in the penultimate chapter of his classic The Road to Serfdom,
Hayek (1944, ch. 15 ) argued that a federal Europe could form the foundation of a new
international legal and political order promoting peace and prosperity throughout the
world. Such an institutional framework, Hayek argued, could be successful only if it were
based upon classical liberal principles of limited government and international free trade.
Unfortunately, Hayeks warning has not been heeded. The need for a secure institutional
framework for a liberal democratic Europe has never been more pressing, yet the failure
to fully apply liberal principles within the EU means that the continued survival of this
particular European project is no longer guaranteed.

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Notes
1. That a public space, or a civil society, wholly independent of the state can be delineated in a
modern society is also a contention worthy of further exploration, though this is beyond the
scope of the present article.
2. The Austrian school of economics is so called because its founders were leading Austrian
economists, notably Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises. With the
Nazi occupation of their home country, however, its members left continental Europe and in
the second half of the twentieth century the school effectively migrated to the USA. The two
de ning characteristics of the Austrian school are methodological individualism and subjec-
tivism (Cubeddu, 1993; Boettke, 1994; Vaughan, 1994; Gloria-Palermo, 1999).
3. There are languages, such as Esperanto and Serbo-Croat, that have, it could be contended,
been rationally constructed. Both these languages, however, owe their construction to
pre-existing, evolved languages.
4. The belief that the public interest ( or the common good, or the general will ) can be determined
and that once it has been it should take precedence over the expressed wishes of the people
re-occurs throughout the history of political thought, from Plato, to Rousseau, to Green, and
to Lenin, among many others.
5. I am conscious that objections may be raised here with regard to the equity or equality
implications of participation within a market economy. This article is not the appropriate place
to deal with these objections, but on the equity ( or otherwise) of market participation, I would
direct the reader to the discussion of equality in Hayek ( 1960, 1978), and, more recently, in
Gray ( 1992 ) and Choi ( 1999 ).