Democracy and International Organizations

This was the last Saturday lecture in the Studium Generale on democracy in all its facets: Democracy - Foundations and Challenges.

It was a refreshing end to the series, as Professor Paulina Starski gave her talk in a charming, spirited, and convincing manner.

Abraham Lincoln gave the best definition of democracy. My American friends will rejoice.

The normative bases of democracy are constitutional law and international law. The right to democracy is in Article 21 of our Grundgesetz (Basic Law), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But Paulina wanted to present the structure of democracy in a legally clean way. She showed the audience that in a democracy, there are structural principles such as the federal state, republic, democracy, and the rule of law. 

State objectives such as the welfare state, care for the environment, and animal welfare are distinguished from these structural principles.

Furthermore, in a democracy, there are objects of legitimacy, such as state authority, and subjects of legitimacy, such as the people.

Red Baron learned that the Peace of Westphalia concluded in Münster and Osnabrück is regarded as the birth of international law. Read more.

States, peoples, and individual groups, such as Non-Governmental Organizations and International Organizations (IOs), are important subjects of international law.

International Organizations deal with cross-border problems. Thus, some competences of individual states are assigned to IOs. When states cede sovereign rights to IOs, these bodies will have a de facto and legal impact on domestic issues.

Article 23 (1) of the German GG (Basic Law) stipulates that the federal government can transfer sovereign rights to IOs by law with the approval of the Bundesrat (German Senate).

Click to enlarge

Here is an overview of the individual organizations of the United Nations.

Prof. Starski spent the rest of her presentation on the relationship between individual states and the European Union (EU). The institutions are listed as:

European Parliament

European Council is a collegiate body that defines the overall political direction and priorities of the European Union.

Council of the European Union, also known as the Council of Ministers, is the second legislative body. Together with the European Parliament, it amends and approves or vetoes the proposals of the European Commission.

European Commission

European Court of Justice

European Central Bank

European Court of Auditors.

The institutional structure of the EU is complex.

On the democratic legitimacy of the EU, Paulina showed a couple of densely labeled slides that were difficult to read and digest during the presentation. I reproduce two of them here.

Prof. Starski concluded that the European Parliament has only limited democratic legitimacy.

Paulina transferred Willy Brandt's famous call on her last slide: We should "dare more democracy" in the context of International Organizations.

I want to answer Paulina's call with a quote about democracy in the United Kingdom that I have never forgotten since my school days: "Our government system isn't one hundred percent democratic, but it works." My English teacher attributed the quote to Winston Churchill.

Churchill's statement, "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time," is better known and documented.

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