Democracy Without Politics in EU Citizen Participation

“If you want to understand how we might move from political passivity to unlock decolonial and revolutionary action at a European scale, this is a book for you”. —Niccolò Milanese, European Alternatives

“Combining innovative democratic theory with empirically rich narratives, Oleart has found an ingenious way of contrasting the depoliticized nature of the EU’s ‘citizen turn’ with fully politicized transnational social movements. A real tour de force and a must-read for all those interested in the question of how to democratize the EU.” —Vivien A. Schmidt, Boston University, USA

“Through the original and powerful concept of the ‘decolonial multitude’, Oleart provides an empirically grounded critique of the ‘citizen turn’ in European politics.” —Jan Orbie, Ghent University, Belgium

How does the dominant understanding(s) of the demo(i)cratic subject in the EU, and of democracy more broadly, shape the EU’s democratic innovations on ‘citizen participation’? What are the politically and normatively preferable alternatives, both in terms of the conceptualisation of the democratic subject in the EU and in the ensuing political practices? The book addresses these questions combining a political theory with a political sociology perspective, contrasting the Democracy Without Politics approach of the EU in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe and its institutional follow-up with that of ongoing transnational activist processes. In doing so, it develops an agonistic alternative to ‘the people(s)’ as the political imaginary of democracy in the EU, which is based on the idea of the ‘decolonial multitude’. Thus, the book puts forward a diagnosis of current debates on EU democratic legitimacy as well as proposing an alternative. 

Alvaro Oleart is a researcher at the Department of Political Science and the Institute for European Studies of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is the author of  Framing TTIP in the European  Public  Spheres: Towards  an  Empowering  Dissensus  for  EU  integration  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), also published in the Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series.