Garbage-time politics in the EU: why and how it is so bad

During timed sport events, with garbage-time, commentators means the very last part of the match when the result has already been decided. In that phase, since there is no realistic chance to alter the outcome of the match, coaches replace their best players with substitutes. In this paper, by drawing upon the experimentalist model of democracy (Dewey 1976, Anderson 2006), I argue that an examination of the constructive function of deliberation and its knowledge producing capacity demonstrates that, despite efforts for transparency and inclusion, something similar to this phenomenon occurs in the EU. At a first glance, the growth of an international and vibrant epistemic community, together with the constitution of an international economic diplomacy, exchange of ideas and knowledge between decision-makers as well an expanding network of INGOs, CSOs and think-tanks should have consolidated deliberation among experts, bureaucrats and elected representatives. Moreover, such a high-level of specialisation should put supranational institutions in the best position to benefit from situated knowledge and pluralism in the Union. However, several commentators, citizens and local politicians argue that, since the policy discourse is accessible only for actors and organizations that are accustomed with Brussels-based deliberations, policy options are limited and a great deal of evidence stays at the margins. In this paper, I explore this claim on its purely epistemic grounds by looking at the construction of the EU position for COP 21. An epistemic point of view helps me to think of social and political actors in the light of the additional evidence they actually bring in the decision-making procedure, without considering strategies and means through which they advance their claims to the others. According to this purely external standard, as I will show, democracy in the EU is legitimate when it brings together all social groups, as potential sources of evidence, in the decision-making procedure.