International Institutions - Democracy and Globalisation

Jurgen Habermas - 'The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalisation' Ongoing erosion of borders is not just a characteristic of the economy - world trade, capital markers, multinational corporations National governments are losing the power to mobilise all the available steering mechanisms of domestic economies, stimulate growth, and so secure vital bases for their legitimation The greater the need to replenish exhausted state budgets by raising taxes on movable property and enacting measures to boost growth, the harder it becomes to do so within the confines of the nation-state Weakening of the Nation-State: The decline in the state's capacities for control - the loss of autonomy means that a state can no longer count on its own forces to provide its citizens with adequate protection from the external effects of decisions taken by other actors or from effects of processes originating beyond its borders. 'Spontaneous border violations', pollution, organised crime, epidemics. Growing deficits in the legitimation of decision-making processes - deficits in democratic legitimation arise whenever the set of those involved in making democratic decisions fails to coincide with the set of those affected by them. Democratic legitimation is also sapped whenever the growing need for coordination is met by inter-state agreements. Embedding of nations in transnational agreements/organisations. EU: largely bureaucratic decision-making process of experts in Brussels offers an example of the typeof democratic deficit caused by the shift away from national decision-making bodies to inter-state committees of government representatives An increasing inability to perform the kinds of steering and organisational functions that help secure legitimacy - widening gap between nation-states' territorially limited room for action on the one hand, and global markets and accelerated capital flows on the other. Capital is exempt from the obligation to stay at home in its search for investment opportunities and profits. Threatens government contraints on the conditions for domestic investment > may exit the same way