intentions, nor as regards its allegedly benign teleology (for examples of this passionate conviction, see Beck 2006: 168; Beck and Grande 2007: 2; Giddens 1998: 142–7). This, in much the same way, then, as yesterday’s nationalist intellectuals could not afford such questioning of the national project. To declare support for, and invest hope in, this form of cosmopolitan subject making while neglecting the power relations through which subjects “forge themselves” (Davies 2005: 135) is tantamount, as André Drainville (2004: 31) has argued in his critique of PNC, to treating citizens as “ghosts.”
A more nuanced power perspective, anchored in the critical-theoretical procedures of negative dialectics, which assess conceptual frameworks and analytic models “in terms of how they are not serving” humanity’s material needs and “self- and mutual recognition of human subjectivities and their aspirations” (Ryner 2005: 145), would place two burdens of proof on the PNC endorsement of EU citizenship. First, the extent to which EU citizenship actually entails a more effective and democratic guarantor of rights vis-à-vis national citizenship; and second, the reasons why EU citizenship serves as a more inclusive basis for identity and rights formation and not merely as a regional mode of exclusiveness based on a new European platform of anti-immigrant nationalism and ethno-cultural chauvinism (Hansen 2000, 2009; Kveinen 2002). Today’s cosmopolitans may assert that Islamophobia only can be tackled above the nation, since, as Beck (2006: 166–7) claims, it is “utterly un-European” to be anti-Muslim—a fact that Beck links directly to the condition that, in sharp contrast to the nation-state, “[r]adical openness is a defining feature of the European project and is the real secret of its success”. Yet, when searching for the empirical corroboration of this and other assertions holding forth the EU project’s inherently benign and anti-racist spirit, one looks in vain for any systematic account demonstrating how such “radical openness” actually manifests in more concrete terms and how it serves to mitigate the current plight of Muslims (see further Chapters 5–6). When a disjuncture exists between the exercise of power and legitimacy (whether defined in terms of social rights, inclusiveness or non-discrimination), as is the case in the contemporary EU project, the task of critical theory must therefore be to scrutinize the contextual environment in which this disjuncture has emerged, to grasps the limits that EU citizenship faces in its task of popular legitimation. PNC, in endorsing EU citizenship on the basis of an abstract model, clearly falls short of this task.
“Nested Membership”: EU Citizenship in a Multilevel 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
