Democracy and Other Challenges: Early Counter-Discourses, 1950s–1970s

Abstract

Unsurprisingly, the de-politicisation patterns I have just discussed in regard to the first three decades or so of integration were not without rivals. This chapter acts as a reminder that the narrative of the existing economic and supranational integration as the way to peace and prosperity was never uncontested. Neither were questions of how these objectives should be pursued, or of who should bear what part of the costs of integration, and reap what share of the benefits. I discuss three sets of competing discourses that deliberately politicised the issue of what the European Communities were about. The first drew on federalist and on specific national traditions that insisted on democracy as a condition of the Communities’ legitimacy. In this context, I look specifically at the debate on direct elections to the European Parliament. A second set of competing discourses challenged the Communities’ supranational elements in the name of national sovereignty. It advanced an intergovernmentalist, rather than supranationalist, counter-vision of integration. Here I look, in particular, at the discourses surrounding the crises of the 1960s. The final discursive challenge to the legitimating discursive patterns I analysed in Chapter 1 arose from difficulties with the member-states’ and the Communities’ ability to deliver efficient problem-solving and planning in the context of the financial and economic crises of the 1970s.