The European Crisis as a Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

The response of the EU to the economic and financial crisis – mainly in terms of an insistence on austerity – has had profound socio-economic implications and indicates the perseverance of a neoliberal, market-based view of European capitalism. At the same time, the EU response has had harsh consequences for democratic policy-making, both in terms of procedures (top-down imposition) and in terms of substantive politics (absence of political choice and debate). The paper will argue that the democratic consequences of EU crisis management are not merely temporal, as in a ‘state of exception’, but rather indicate a more profound and long-term crisis of democratic capitalism. This crisis involves a ‘neoliberal’, ‘network’ or ‘cognitive’ form of capitalism that has emerged in the 1970s, which has absorbed an artistic or democratic critique on capitalism (see Boltanski and Chiapello 2005), but at the same time structurally undermines the ideas of inclusive democracy and social equality. The paper concludes with arguing that the European integration project faces ever stronger tensions if it does not address the democracy undermining dimensions of the market project, and with the suggestion that a politicization of the EU is needed which embeds the market project in a solidarity-based political project.