openDemocracy: Catalunya and beyond: what’s after the nation-state?

On the one hand, European nations are increasingly unable to address the global challenges brought about by technological innovation, migration, climate change, or financial flows. Even more, the perseverance of national divisions and reciprocal vetoes leads to a worsening of policy choices and a narrowing of democratic spaces for all. This is dramatically evident in the European Union: where the inability to construct a transnational democracy leads to dysfunctional economic policies, lack of any credible policy on migration, tax competition between states and a race to the bottom on workers’ rights.

On the other hand, the nation state is being challenged from below. From Barcelona to Naples, citizens increasingly demand the right to greater participation in the decisions that affect their lives. The new municipalist experiences of Spain, placing citizen participation at their centre, testify to this demand. The European Union calls this ‘subsidiarity’. One of the most celebrated theorists behind Barcelona en Comu, Joan Subirats, calls it the sovereignty of proximity.  [...]

And equally at European level: for if the European Council serves to represent national governments and the European Parliament is meant to represent the common interests of citizens, then the time is surely ripe for a European Chamber of Cities and Regions, representing the territories and cities of Europe and acting as a democratic guarantor of, among other things, fiscal solidarity. We should take up Benjamin Barber’s idea of a global parliament of mayors and bring this to the heart of the debate on reforming the EU, as recently advocated also by Ulrike Guerot.

Part of the reason for the crisis of democracy in Europe is our collective inability to imagine and implement new political and democratic models. We live in extraordinary times, when everything is shifting under our very eyes. In times like these we need to have the courage and the ambition to relinquish our old convictions and our old institutions and begin preparing the world of tomorrow.

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