IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v7y2019i4p291-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Free Trade versus Democracy and Social Standards in the European Union: Trade-Offs or Trilemma?

Author

Listed:
  • Claudia Wiesner

    (Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany)

Abstract

This article aims at conceptualising, in analytical as well as normative-theoretical terms, the tensions between free trade, democratic and social standards, and national sovereignty that are named in Dani Rodrik´s “globalisation trilemma” for the case of the European Union (EU). It is argued that the trilemma concept is much more fitting to the EU than a simple trade-off concept. This model offers a conceptual path to both analysing existing tensions and thinking of resolving them: a) the EU has, indeed, been intervening into national democracies and national sovereignty as its legislation is superior to national legislation; b) EU legislation and judgements of the Court of Justice of the EU have been reducing national social standards; c) executives and numerous new institutions and agencies with indirect legitimation have taken over competencies that formerly lay in the domain of national directly legitimated legislatives; and d) these negative effects relate to the EU’s giving preference to the liberalisation of free trade of capital, goods and services over democracy, social standards, and national sovereignty. Against the framework of the globalisation trilemma, analysis is combined with normative-theoretical judgements on the quality democracy of the setting that has been found and a conceptual discussion. The article concludes by discussing the perspectives of the setting examined and the possible paths to solutions, arguing that in order to keep a high level of economic integration, democracy, and social standards in the EU, national sovereignty needs to give way.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudia Wiesner, 2019. "Free Trade versus Democracy and Social Standards in the European Union: Trade-Offs or Trilemma?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 291-300.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v7:y:2019:i:4:p:291-300
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v7i4.2272
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2272
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v7i4.2272?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francis Cheneval & Frank Schimmelfennig, 2013. "The Case for Demoicracy in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 334-350, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Todd Landman & Hans-Joachim Lauth, 2019. "Political Trade-Offs: Democracy and Governance in a Changing World," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 237-242.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2013. "Political legitimacy in a non-optimal currency area," MPIfG Discussion Paper 13/15, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Peter Niesen, 2017. "The ‘Mixed’ Constituent Legitimacy of the European Federation," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 183-192, March.
    3. Vera van Hüllen, 2013. "Political Legitimacy in a Non-optimal Currency Area," KFG Working Papers p0052, Free University Berlin.
    4. Parsons, Craig & Smith, Andy, 2022. "The 'completeness' of the EU single market in comparison to the United States," Single Market Economics Papers WP2022/7, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (European Commission), Chief Economist Team.
    5. Dominik Schraff & Frank Schimmelfennig, 2020. "Does differentiated integration strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the EU? Evidence from the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(4), pages 590-611, December.
    6. Thomas Bernauer & Steffen Mohrenberg & Vally Koubi, 2020. "Do citizens evaluate international cooperation based on information about procedural and outcome quality?," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 505-529, April.
    7. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2014. "After the crash: A perspective on multilevel European democracy," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/21, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Blatter, Joachim, 2018. "Transnationalizing democracy properly: Principles and rules for granting consociated citizens voting rights and partisan representation in the parliaments of nation states," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2018-102, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    9. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2016. "De-constitutionalization and majority rule: A democratic vision for Europe," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/14, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    10. Claudia Wiesner, 2019. "Free Trade versus Democracy and Social Standards in the European Union: Trade-Offs or Trilemma?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 291-300.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v7:y:2019:i:4:p:291-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.