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Governance Polity

      The second body of literature, grounded primarily in the disciplinary traditions of legal studies and political science, goes beyond the narrow focus of PNC to analyze the legal interactions between citizenship models at the EU and national levels. With direct affinities to multilevel governance (hereafter MLG) integration theory, this approach is interested in uncovering potential areas of conflict and congruence that characterize the overlapping competencies of the EU and national governments with specific reference to their formal institutional arrangements for citizenship. The MLG approach relates citizenship to processes of integration and seeks to highlight the ways in which EU citizenship is shaped by actors within the “fragmented, complex, and multi-sited” EU polity (Bellamy and Warleigh 1998: 466). Ultimately the MLG approach to EU citizenship, though characterized by a diverse range of theoretical positions and empirical applications, is captured succinctly by Thomas Faist (2001: 37), who observes that “European citizenship is nested in various sites: regional, state and supranational forms of citizenship function in complementary ways—while the associated norms, rules and institutions are subject to constant revision and further development on all governance levels.” Discussions of social citizenship and rights, on the one hand, and the status of migrants, ethnic minorities and third-country nationals, on the other, have figured prominently in the MLG citizenship literature, and it is to these two themes that we now turn.

      There is a general consensus between scholars working within the MLG approach to EU citizenship that, to this point, there has been an absence of EU-level social rights. Disagreement exists however, over the implications of “de-socialized” EU citizenship, and whether or not EU-level social rights are obtainable or even a necessary component of a legitimate EU polity. Pessimists argue that the lack of EU social rights is a main factor contributing to the EU’s legitimacy crisis, and that the current institutional configuration of the EU imposes severe limits on the realization of a “social Europe” underpinned by social citizenship provisions (Closa 1996; Downes 2001).

      Though not dealing explicitly with the issue of EU citizenship, the work of Fritz Scharpf serves as one of the most sophisticated, and we think justifiably respected, frameworks effectively capturing the MLG line of thinking of European social rights. For Scharpf, the lack of EU social rights can be attributed to the fact that the relationship between positive market-correcting integration and negative market-making integration has become increasingly asymmetrical: while economic policies have been progressively Europeanized, social-protection policies have remained at the national level (see further Chapter 3). “As a consequence,” Scharpf (2002: 666) argues, “national welfare states are constitutionally constrained by the ‘supremacy’ of all European rules of economic integration, liberalization and competition law.”

      Intensifying economic interdependence in the EU has proceeded rapidly. This has imposed restrictions on national governments’ abilities to provide social goods. At the same time, according to Scharpf, a “joint decision trap” has prevented governments in the Council of Ministers from agreeing on integration in areas of social policy. The EU therefore suffers from a multilevel and dual-faceted legitimacy crisis of both input-legitimacy (government-by-the-people) and output-legitimacy (government-for-the-people) (Scharpf 1999). Scharpf’s solution to this dual crisis of legitimacy runs counter to the proposals of PNC based on strengthening collective European identity and the input-based model of constitutional patriotism. Instead Scharpf (1999: Ch. 1) argues that the diversity of the EU’s member states prevents the formation of a collective European identity and that this diversity, in turn, renders input-based models of legitimacy based on majoritarian democracy unsuitable in the EU context (Thomassen and Schmitt 2004). The EU should therefore concentrate on strengthening output-based legitimacy, an important component of which would be to strengthen the social dimension of EU governance. Although the nature of the EU polity places daunting obstacles to EU-level social rights, Scharpf (2001: 19) suggests that a more effective route, against both supranational and intergovernmental decision making, may lie in the “open method of coordination” (OMC) and the hopes that EU-level “monitoring, benchmarking and peer review could increase the effectiveness of national employment and social policies” (see Chapter 4).

      The second theme that has preoccupied much of the MLG literature involves the status of non-citizen migrants or resident third country nationals (hereafter TCNs). MLG scholars working on this issue have come to a simple yet significant observation: since the claim to EU citizenship is tied to national citizenship in a member state, it excludes the more than 18 million TCNs³ resident in the EU from its provisions. Whereas barriers to free movement and residence are increasingly removed for Union citizens, possession of member state nationality remains a qualifying criterion for eligibility to the benefits afforded by Community rules in the post–Amsterdam Treaty Europe. Union citizenship remains conditioned on possession or acquisition of state nationality. This has resulted in the relegation of long-term resident nationals of third countries to the periphery of the emerging European civil society, despite the fact that they are an integral part of the EU and contribute to the development and flourishing of European societies (Kostakopoulou 2002: 444).

      The exclusionary and limited nature of EU citizenship as relates to TCNs, as MLG scholars are keen to point out, runs contrary to the assertions made by cosmopolitans that it forms the basis for a more progressive post-national identity detached from the nation-state (Kostakopoulou 2005: 240). MLG scholars also point to the fact that the position of TCNs challenges the notion that EU citizenship serves as a route to popular legitimacy for the EU project, as a large base of the EU population, directly subject to supranational policy making, are denied the democratic right to participate in the political process (Geddes 2000a; Day and Shaw 2002). This also raises concerns about the abilities of the EU to promote the social integration of TCNs, given the increased institutional capacities of the EU in areas of migration and asylum policy since the Amsterdam Treaty (ratified in 1999) (Kostakopoulou 2005). In terms of possible solutions, the MLG approach advocates a number of institutional reforms that could remedy the precarious position of TCNs and expand upon EU citizenship beyond its current exclusionary nature. This would entail either modifying EU citizenship, basing it on residence rather than nationality (“denizenship,” as coined by Hammar [1990]) (Hansen, R. and Weil 2001; Hansen, R. 1998), or building upon existing EU initiatives that seek to give TCNs rights and obligations that are comparable to those of EU citizens (Kostakopoulou 2002: 449; see also Chapters 5–6).

      The MLG approach to citizenship thus has several advantages over PNC: most importantly, it situates EU citizenship within the concrete historical context of EU integration, recognizing how the politics of citizenship in the EU is influenced by several actors and institutions at multiple levels of governance. It also, especially in the work of Scharpf, offers a more nuanced approach to the scalar dimensions of EU citizenship, challenging the portrayal of globalization and EU integration as necessarily negative exogenous pressures on national citizenship models. At the same time, however, the MLG approach to citizenship suffers from the same pitfalls that characterize MLG integration theory. In narrowly focusing on the institutional form of EU citizenship, the MLG approach to EU citizenship fails to address its socioeconomic content, explaining why it has emerged, who benefits from it, and what kind of citizenship model it seeks to promote (Holman 2004). Although MLG recognizes that certain elements of society have indeed lost out when it comes to EU citizenship (social rights beneficiaries, TCNs), it does not make any systematic attempt to explain why this has been the case. Thus the institutional reforms that MLG proposes tend toward pluralism—failing to take into account the power relations that limit the efficacy of such measures (van Apeldoorn et al 2003). As a descriptive theory concerned mostly with the “problem solving” (see Cox 1986) dimensions of EU citizenship, MLG cannot account for the origins and trajectories of structural power that underpin the provision of rights and responsibilities in the multilevel governance polity. Much like PNC, the explanatory dimensions of EU citizenship, especially as they relate to issues of power and legitimacy, are largely out of reach.

      Towards a Critical History

      Despite

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