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Work package 6 Transparency, accountability and responsibility in an enlarged Europe ‘MAKING’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic Annihilation Dr. Katharine Sarikakis November 2006-12-01 University of Leeds, UK Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence Institute of Communications Studies

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Work package 6

Transparency, accountability and responsibility in an enlarged Europe

‘MAKING’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic Annihilation

Dr. Katharine Sarikakis

November 2006-12-01

University of Leeds, UKJean Monnet European Centre of Excellence

Institute of Communications Studies

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‘MAKING’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic Annihilation

Dr Katharine Sarikakis

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between new forms of European governance, as expressed through security-focused policies, and the European citizen. It seeks to unravel the contextual framework within which the notion of civil liberties, citizens’ participation in the democratisation of supranational and international politics, and the supranational governance are re-defined. The paper argues that the processes of ‘securitisation’ have an impact for the democratic functioning of citizenship by a) restricting the spaces and processes of action and communication among citizens b) restricting citizens’ access to policymaking, in particular in highly sensitive areas, for their effect on civil liberties; and c) prioritising the executive branches of the European polity at the expense of representative politics and the judiciary. This combination of policy trends contributes to the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of EU citizens.

Katharine Sarikakis is Director of the Centre for International Communications Research at the Institute of Communications Studies, the University of Leeds and a member of the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence. This work was carried out in the context of CHALLENGE-programme (Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security), a research project funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission’s DG for Research (www.libertysecurity.org).

Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the author in a personal capacity and not to any institution with which she is associated.

Copyright 2006, Katharine Sarikakis

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‘Making’ Security: Citizenship, Public Sphere and the Condition of Symbolic

Annihilation

Katharine Sarikakis

Introduction

It has been widely claimed, both in the mass media and by politicians that terrorism has

changed the way we ‘look at the world’ for ever; that the western world has ‘lost its

innocence’ and that these are indeed times of crisis. In the post-9/11 era, European

nations have found themselves under pressure to prove an ally in the ‘war against

terrorism’ and demonstrate a state of ‘readiness’ to combat the threat at an international

level. Some EU member States more readily than others have entered the rhetoric of

‘threat’ and ‘defense’ by participating in armed conflict outside their own boundaries and

by intensifying the use of surveillance and policing technologies and policies within their

borders. Others more reluctantly have entered the debate and policy arena of ‘making’

security for their own citizens, by participating in EU wide and international policy

measures. At an EU level, national policies have sought to influence EU policy and vice

versa, transforming and actively shaping the character of EU governance. Through a

series of policies framed as counter-terrorism measures, the EU is gradually introducing

new definitional sets about good governance and security, and makes new claims for

legitimacy of decisions that are highly contested. In this process, notions of citizenship

and democratic participation are redefined to fit in the framework of securitisation.

This paper discusses the ways in which the gradual bypassing of active citizenship, as

understood through the process of communication, information and participation in

policymaking, is creating the conditions for the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of citizens, as an

essential definitional and normative category in the political process. The impact of such

processes can be detrimental for the legitimacy of the European project, as well as the

moral and normative superiority of human rights vis a vis the symbolic and physical

violence against human beings, their political and creative expression and their societies.

Moreover, such processes undermine the very core of European values, stated in the

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programmatic documents in connection to EU citizenship, such as the European Charter

of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Securitisation, transparency and accountability

The securitisation of issues, that is the abrupt break from the norm of definitional politics,

which is expressed through political deliberation that takes place in a widely accessible

public sphere, bears a set of questions and contestations about the legitimacy and

accountability of a governing authority. There is nothing inherently ‘natural’ about the

definition of issues as matter of ‘security’, as issues previously regarded as part of

established laws and procedures, suddenly obtain an additional attribute that situates them

in the realm of exceptionality. For example, the hegemonic discourses around global

terrorism point to phenomena little different from long-standing expressions of political

violence, familiar to many nation states since the post world war 2 era (Didier 2006).

Moreover, the exceptionality applied by states to the treatment of political violence is

also nothing new. There is a historical record of exceptional measures taken by nation

states in their attempt to deal with the ‘threats’, as they saw and defined them in different

historical periods, up to our days. However, the degree, extent and processes through

which this exceptionality is expanded and applied as an international policy regime raises

questions about the role and indeed survival of democratic citizenship, as bound to

democratic governance.

As Taureck (2006) points out, one of the core characteristics of securitisation is the fact

that policy questions are moved outside the sphere of normal politics. This means that the

standard procedures which are known, and applied to the process of agenda setting,

debate and decision making1 are bypassed and often replaced by shorter and non-

transparent procedures. Discussion around the (defined as) securitised issue becomes a

privilege of selected elites on the one hand, while the application of normal law is also

selective, on the other. The process by which securitisation takes place is observed to

1 Of course this is an oversimplified description of the policymaking process, but for the purpose of this part of the paper, the emphasis is placed on the ‘normality’ of standard and widely accepted systems within the democratic polity.

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consist of three phases: first the identification of an external threat that renders the issue

at hand as one of security; second, the proposed- and applied- state of emergency,

accompanied by corresponding action, whereby the government in principle, at the

national level, or the executive branch of the polity, at the supranational level, self-

extends its powers above and beyond the normatively ascribed ones; and third, as a

consequence the ‘inter-unit’ relations of the political system are affected through the

operationalisation of power outside the socially contracted rules between the State (or

state-like formation such as the EU) and the citizen (Buzan et al. 1998: 6 in Taureck

2006).

The consequences of this process become soon obvious: on a first and immediate level,

the principle of transparency is violated through the application of the definition of

‘exceptionality on issues that then are dealt with outside the realm of normal politics and

therefore away from public scrutiny. As Lodge (2005) explains :

Transparency means everything and nothing. There is a lack of clarity as to the real purpose of advocating transparency in the EU. For heuristic reasons transparency will be portrayed as a multi-dimensional adventure in European integration where transparency presents challenges to: 1. the EU’s structures (authority reconfiguration); 2. accountability and values (rectification of the democratic deficit); 3. accessibility (procedural gates to information); 4. vigilance and attentiveness (a listening EU), and emergent forms of e-governance.

Second, the principle of accountability, as a prerequisite for the democratic exercise of

power is being undermined and in some cases rendered irrelevant, as again the State and

its Executive branch assume more powers than assigned to it, according to the principle

of balance and checking of powers through the interaction of the other two estates, the

Legislative and the Judiciary. Finally, there is a knock-on effect upon the functioning of

the Fourth Estate, the mass media, through denial of access to information, labelled

‘sensitive’.

The problems of transparency and accountability are exacerbated in the case of a

supranational structure, such as the EU. The reason lies in the polity’s relatively brief

history, when compared to nation states, whereby the time necessary for the cultivation of

a European identity, and indeed even traits, such as loyalty to and familiarity with the

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polity is simply inadequate- if we accept that internal social cohesion is one of the

prerequisites for the normative justification of a governing authority. Normative

justification or the raison d’ être is one of the three components of legitimacy for any

authority, and decision making privileges exercised by powerful actors. The second

component is the existence of widely known and accepted procedures for decision-

making, and the final component is that of legality. Therefore, transparency, expressed

through the first two elements and accountability, a combination of all three are the

overarching goals for any public authority with the power to affect citizens’ lives.

Accountability also bears a moral dimension, that of the moral responsibility of the state,

in our case the EU polity, towards its citizens that it will withhold the principles and obey

the rules of the social contract between citizens and power, as it has been trusted in the

polity.

The main difference between the classic notion of the (nation or federal) State and the EU

lies in the very construction of the EU. The polity only very recently and in particularly

in the past decade has succeeded in actively addressing the question of legitimacy, which

was concentrated mainly around the lack of an understanding of who makes decisions

that are far reaching and ultimately transferred to national contexts. But additionally, it is

the objective cause, that is not simply the ‘feelings’ of citizens, but the lack of democratic

structures and commitment that bring the citizen at the core of the polity. These

problematic aspects of the EU construction have been addressed successfully to a great,

but incomplete, extent through the meaningful involvement of the European Parliament

in the decision-making process, in a legally more substantial role than it has enjoyed

before. This development, making the EP a co-legislator together with the Council of

Ministers2 only begins to project the image of a democratic EU – and substantially

address its democratic deficit. Again this effort is seriously undermined through the

exception of EP’s involvement from any security-related issues3, such as regulation

2 The most important role is that in the co-decision process, which was provided for by the Amsterdam Treaty and signaled the day of a more democratic representational politics in the EU. 3 According to the Hague protocol the following areas are of particular priority in the EU- completing the second phase of the common asylum policy by 2010;- initiating a debate on the possible creation of a European corps of border guards;- setting up the Schengen Information System (or SIS II, due to be up and running by 2007) and the Visa Information System (VIS);

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dealing with data protection and transfer, the establishment of an EU wide Police

controlled database/s affecting citizens’s levels of privacy and independence, as well as

changes in criminal (common) law. The democratic vacuum is further exacerbated by the

fact that national parliaments, too, find themselves excluded from national procedures of

amending (or driving) such policies, which in their majority are drafted as matters of

security, and therefore as matters of emergency and exceptionality. The EP’s

dissatisfaction with the level of involvement of representational politics in such sensitive

decision-making areas is echoed is the following statement:

Parliament notes that the establishment of such an area [freedom, security and justice] is today one of the main priorities of European integration. It believes that it is vital to ensure a balance between the aims of freedom, security and justice, taking account of fundamental rights and citizens' freedoms. However, it considers that as a representative of the peoples of the EU, and without prejudice to its formal competences, it should be involved in the adoption of all measures, including those adopted within the framework of the third pillar. It highlights the negative consequences that the division between the first and third pillar entails for the achievement of an area of freedom, security and justice, including a serious lack of parliamentary control. Cooperation with the Council is considered to be insufficient. The EP hopes that the post-Nice process will see the codecision procedure being extended to all areas within justice and home affairs. The European Parliament strongly supports the developments which the Constitution, particularly Article III-396 thereof, would bring in the field of freedom, security and justice as it would give the EP codecision powers on almost all AFSJ matters. In addition, most Council decisions would be taken by qualified majority voting (QMV), which would speed up the development of the AFSJ4.

Public Sphere and the changing framework of EU governance

It is clear that securitisation is ‘based on power and capability’ (Taureck 2006) and is by

definition contrary to the principle of openness and accountability. The ways in which

Nation states in the EU, but also abroad and in particular in the USA, have attempted to

provide a normative justification for the new state of emergency- and therefore the

- establishing the Internal Security Committee as set out in the Constitution;- introducing the European evidence warrant by 2005;- setting up a European police record information system.4 EP fact sheets. 4.11.1. An area of freedom, security and justice: general aspects

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effective cancellation of openness and transparency- have been reflected through a

discourse of binary oppositions such as ‘threat vs. defense’ and ‘us vs. them’ in the public

sphere. With these, the gradual establishment of a mode of ‘governmentality of fear and

unease’ (Tsoukala 2006, Bigo 2004, Huysmans 2004) takes place, that comes to replace

not only the practice of governance in the EU and within Nation States, but also the

criteria for good governance, and therefore the measuring, and moral, standards of the

practice and normative shaping of democracy. The technologisation of policing of

everyday life through surveillance, retention of data and files on citizens’ activities, the

exchange and unauthorised access to personal information by the executive and private

companies without the legal seal of courts, general invasion of privacy, interceptions of

electronic communications and processing of thought and expression provide ‘a good

definition of a police state’ (Caspar Bowden, Foundation for Information Policy

Research, in The Guardian, 2001 in Tsoukala 2006: 616). The systemic effects of this

trend are far reaching, as they form the future of EU governance and its relationship with

citizens, with reactions that are unlikely to go unnoticed and with the likelihood of

leaning heavier towards an intentional apathy and political disregard towards the polity.

There is evidence form research in environmental policy, as well as risk regulation that

citizens ‘assent to rules only if they have the impression that their own concerns have

been treated fairly in the rule making process’ (Thompson and Rayner in Nanz and

Steffek 2004: 320). The disassociation of citizens from the workings of the polity will

effectively constitute a permanent fracture in the delicate relationship between civil

society and EU institutions.

Even more worryingly however, we witness an unprecedented assault on the rationale

and legal framework of human rights, in particular in nation states, such as the UK, where

the constitutional recognition of such rights has been resisted by political elites, as they

interfere with policies and practices of the British polity– that however have also been

questioned by civil society and media professionals alike5. As research into the public

5 The wide range of application of human rights has brought to the light a number of problematic and arguably unjust policies, such as the ineligibility to legal aid when accused of libel, which was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights in 2006 in the famous McLibel case, whereby two activists were sued by the corporation of McDonald’s for disseminating information about the effects of the corporation on the environment, human health, treatment of animals and unionization. According to UK libel law, the weight falls on the defendant to prove the basis of such information, while at the same time legal aid is

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discourses has indicated (Tsoukala 2006; Welch 2003), references and a discursive

framework on insecurity aims to discredit and render irrelevant (indeed often also present

as dangerous) the legal and normative framework of human rights, by providing

exceptions to these rights and therefore indirectly to the very definition of ‘human’.

For some analysts, the climate of fear, arguably intimidation of public debate and even

national representative politics, as well as actions of violence raise the question as to the

terrorising effects of the state authority and mode of governance itself. Stohl (2006)

proposes a definition of terrorism, which focuses on the act itself, away from the alleged

perpetrator, including ‘not simply acts of violence but threats (implying credible threats)

of violence as well, so that all acts of instrumental violence which intend to influence an

audience (through fear of further violence if they do not comply with whatever demands

are being made) would be included’ (p. 6). According to this definition, it is possible to

consider the indirect ways of fear-inducing governance as an act of threat and violence. If

the selective use of legality and attention to human rights is suggested as a measure

against the minority of the –internal or external- ‘enemy’, with the aim to protect the

‘many’, then two problematic and arbitrary assumptions are made: first that the ‘many’

are supposedly ‘happy’ to exchange their civil liberties for security; second, that is

morally acceptable to condition an alleged civil, political, practical and philosophical

‘choice’ of giving up the principles and foundations of civil liberties ‘either’ to the enemy

‘or’ to one’s own political unit, in our case the European State and the European Union

polity. Indeed, there is evidence that the degree of authoritarian behaviour is a good

indicator as to whether people under threat are predisposed to accept abuse of human

rights and civil liberties and support policies of surveillance. Those with high scores of

such behaviour, as found by Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, and Moschner (2005), will tend to

denied in libel cases. According to media professionals and activists this is just one but a significant example of the beneficiary effects of the Human Rights Act, whereby it has been possible for ordinary people to find protection in their right to express their opinion and critique against powerful transnational corporations. Libel laws in the UK have been often used to silence the media, due to costly and uncertain outcome in which a court case usually results. Due to the comprehensive character of Human Rights legislation, the benefits for the protection of the citizen against systemic and other abuses, including provisions such as fair trial, privacy etc, present surveillance policy supporters with many difficulties. The recent attempts by the UK government to persuade the European Parliament to deprioritise Human Rights in the face of ‘global terrorism’, during the UK EU presidency is a telling example of the systematic efforts to undermine the progressive framework of Human Rights.

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accept such measures, while those with low such scores will tend to react to them.

George Gerbner has also reported similar findings in his longitudinal study of audience

effects through the long-term consumption of television violence. According to Gerbner

the heavier viewers were more likely to adopt authoritarian measures, than light viewers.

The common link between these studies is the perception and exposure to fear, that

triggers anti-democratic sentiments. The effects of authoritarian behaviour however

expand well beyond those of accepting surveillance measures or restriction of civil

liberties. They have far reaching implications for a nation’s and Europe’s internal social

cohesion, as authoritarian citizens express xenophobia, nationalistic, racist and sexist

beliefs and tend to consider diversity a problem (Cohrs, Kielmann, Maes, and Moschner

2005). In the multicultural, diverse and multiethnic fabric of Europe, it is obvious that

such attitudes are not helpful for the construction of cultural and structural solidarity, that

is urgently needed in the geopolitical space of the EU, especially given the increased

material, and symbolic, polarisations of it populations.

Conditioning the symbolic annihilation of citizens

Questions of social cohesion become prominent in 21st century Europe and attain

particular significance, not only due to the EU internal expansion but especially in

relation to the implications deriving from the climate of securitisation. The role of the

state in citizens’ lives, the ‘small places’ of lived experience, and in particular in the

communicative action and process is the nexus of global economic integration and local

sociocultural and political affirmation. Such ‘small places’ are located in the construction

of identity (national or European), where the media as well as general cultural policies

play an important role, the quality of communicative action within national boundaries,

such as freedom of expression or press freedom, but also across boundaries in the form of

communication and information (or content) flow, human mobility as in the case of

tourism or internet traffic. The fields of communicative expression, whether through data

exchange or mass media consumption, or whether in the form of political protest or

media use are paramount in the state agenda of sovereignty and role transformation. In

the current climate of broadening the EU and exercising policing control as a post 9/11

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effect, communicative processes become more urgent as they obtain two characteristics,

according to which they are classified. First as an added value through commodification

and their position in existing or potential markets and second, for their political value

that, may or may not be a source for profit, clash unswervingly with the agenda of

securitization and militarization. Technology once again lies in the core of both new

profit-sources in the field of the leisure industry (including culture as a commodity and

the media) and of the military-government nexus, through the increased interest in

biometrics, the privatization of the correction system, contracts with the private sector

active in defense and military research or the collation and monitoring of personal data.

The technological possibilities that run through the ‘small places’ of everyday life,

whether through ordinary internet or television consumption or in forms that raise the

antennas of civil rights organizations such as the case of identity cards in the UK, are

there, bringing with them an active and sophisticated populace that asserts its own

strategies to deal with them. It is well documented and much researched, that the civil

society at large, not only organized in NGOs, but also in loose, ephemeral and issue-

driven groups are expressing concerns and disagreement to the ways in which

securitisation is creeping up in everyday life, expanding the field of exceptionality across

most areas of human interaction. At a pan-European but also global level, we see the

formations of transborder alliances with the aim to resist the marginalisation of citizens in

policymaking and world governance.

The phenomenon of conditioning the marginalisation of the citizen in EU politics

provides grounds for concern about an all-encompassing assault on earned rights and

liberties, as well as an assault on the very institutions of liberal democracy. Drawing on

Gaye Tuchman’s (1978) concept of symbolic annihilation, the preceding discussion

points to uncomfortable and unanswered questions about the role of the citizen in the

modern polity. Symbolic annihilation has been most productively used by feminist

scholarship to describe the processes of exclusion, trivialisation and marginalisation of

women in media representations. If the media are contemporary story tellers, then the

exclusion of women, and any marginalized group, from them legitimises their exclusion

from the public sphere, while it also denies them the recognition of their social presence

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as equal citizens. The trivializsation of women’s political and cultural claims and

stereotyping of women, when present in the media, contribute to their unequal treatment

in the cultural and political domain, effectively marginalising them further in society. The

media of course provide one version of the public sphere, where public debate on issues

of common concern takes place. However, extending this conceptualiszation to include

the fora and platforms of inclusion in the processes of decision-making and public policy

presents an expanded form of public sphere and recognises the communicative process as

an integral part of democratic politics. Indeed, the same way securitisation is largely a

matter of communicating actions, policies and their legitimisation, so is the public sphere

the connotation for the communicative, decision-making process. The symbolic

annihilation of citizens, as feminist research and theory has shown very vividly, takes

place through a multilevel and multicentred mode of governance that consists of a

combination of systemic and symbolic fields of action. In the case of the EU, these are

located a) in the very institutional organisation of the EU polity b) the function – or

dysfunction- of the assigned Estates c) the processes of decision-making and their level

of inclusivity of citizens d) the manipulation and discursive denial and dismissing of

citizens’ voiced concerns e) the imbalanced representation of citizens and polity or other

authority in mediated public spheres f) the very actions that annihilate civil liberties and

free agency, through the construction and induction of fear and threat and g) through the

destruction of social solidarity through the classification of citizens according to ethnic

origin, migration status, or religious background.

First, the institutional organisation of the EU contributes to the bypassing of citizens’

concerns, in as far the European Parliament is not involved in the measures associated

with the securitisation of Europe. Although, as research has shown the EP is the most

democratic of the European Institutions, providing multiple points of access for the

representation of public interests and in creating communicative spaces for these interests

(Sarikakis 2004, 2005), the work of a political Union, especially when the decisions made

surrounding security are by definition and in substance political, is incomplete, so long

the EP is not authorized to oversee and codecide on matters of civil liberties.

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Second, the dys-function of the Legislative, Judiciary and Executive powers of the EU

has a detrimental effect for the protection of citizens’ interests vis a vis the polity itself, as

well as the private interests that benefit from the adoption of surveillance and monitoring

technologies that they are paid for by largely public funds. As Freeman (2006) explains,

it is not necessarily simply the extent to which emergency provision are applied, but

‘whether measures themselves undermined the institutional constraints that protected

civil liberties… exceptions are thought to not be as significant, as the measures in place

to not allow the same happening in the future’. The situation underway in the EU does

not offer any guarantees nor does it make good use of the judiciary and legislative

branches to impose conditions upon the exercise of surveillance and securitisation. The

legitimacy of the EU is at stake, perhaps not at a first glance, as decisions of the third

pillar reside with intergovernmental procedures, and by extension with the executive arm

of the polity. Legitimacy of this sort is fragile and questionable. Coutu and Giroux,

discussing the state of emergency in Canada and its effects on immigration policy alert us

to the distinctive value of normative legitimacy, that is the role of the judiciary to

guarantee constitutional protection of civil liberties and laws, versus decisional

legitimacy, the executive’s role in making decisions, just because they can (Coutu and

Giroux 2006). In the latter case, ‘the centre of gravity of State’s legitimation shifts from

the Judiciary to the Executive and Administrative branches of the State (the

parliamentary State, here, being only peripheral)’ (Coutu and Giroux 2006:330). As the

judiciary and legislative arms of the polity are developed to provide citizens with

protection and political representation, their marginalisation or reduction to formal

functions constitutes an assault on citizens’ rights.

Third, deriving from that, there is a need for the involvement of the public in the

decision-making process of the EU, especially when such sensitive areas such as privacy,

liberty and transparency of the political system are concerned. Most importantly, the need

for public’s involvement in definition of ‘emergency’ and exceptionality, definition of

‘security’ and process of securitisation has not been fulfilled or adequately addressed. In

fact, most such decisions have been and are being taken in secrecy, away form public

debate and without due consultation. Scrutinising the power holders is an integral part of

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a healthy functioning of democratic governance and this can be done through a

functioning press, through citizens’ councils and the support of the judiciary and

parliament.

However, alone ‘enhancing transparency or generating public debate on global

governance is only a necessary but not a sufficient precondition for its democratization’.

(Nanz and Steffek 2004: 323). Participation in policy making should be part and parcel of

a set of criteria that aim to empower marginalized groups, as well as providing formal

and substantive access to meaningful participation in public policy.

Fourth, the respect for citizens’ concerns and attentive listening to their experience as

well as claims is paramount for good governance and again relies on the level of citizens’

involvement. At the same time, for the polity to make effective claims of legitimacy, it

has to adhere to the specific moral values (Samhat and Payne) governed by human

rights but most importantly also to adhere to the values declared by the polity itself, as

they are expressed in the Charter for Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Especially, for

the EU, an international- hegemonic- power next to the USA, any policies and state of

affairs within its own territory reflects its cultural image to the world. Even more so,

countries outside Europe look to the EU for two reasons: as a counter-set of human and

social values towards the US, governed by a commitment to welfare state, human rights,

as well as respect for UN system of world governance.

Fifth, alongside the legislature and judiciary, the press has a very important role to play:

their incapacitation leaves the door open to the abuse of civil liberties. However, the

political economy of the press (electronic and print) as well as a set of news values that

are detrimental in the inclusion of explanatory parts next to the facts, events-driven

sound-bite news disallows in depth investigation of complex issues, such as the process

of securitisation. Moreover, the hostility of some national presses towards the idea of the

EU contributes to more biased coverage of such questions that are not helpful for the

empowerment of the citizen. Often, the citizen takes the backseat. As Kellner asserts

‘once the corporate media have surrendered their responsibilities to serve the public and

provide a forum for democratic debate and addressing significant issues of common

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concern, they have largely promoted the growth of corporate and state power and

undermined democracy. (2004: 32)

Concluding remarks

This paper has explored the changing conditions of EU governance and has discussed the

implications for its relationship with European citizens in the era of securitisation. It has

argued that we are facing a set of paradoxical conditions that marginalise the role of the

citizen, while at the same time the polity has attempted to bring the citizen at the

forefront of political action. The marginalisation of the citizen is taking place through a

set of policies that police and process citizens’ thoughts, invade their privacy and

disallow their meaningful participation in policymaking, assembly and debate. The need

for a functioning public sphere that extends beyond the mediated public sphere, offered

by the mass media, is closely related to the legitimacy of the polity. Nevertheless, the

culture of secrecy and exceptionality that accompanies claims for a ‘state of emergency’

as is currently the case in the EU and European nations is prohibitive towards the

functioning of such public domain. This combination of these policy trends contributes to

the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of EU citizen, by rendering this newly established legal entity

effectively secondary to a militarising and policing discourse machine.

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Coutu Michael and Marie-Helene Giroux 2006 The Aftermath of 11 September 2001: Liberty vs. Security before the Supreme Court of Canada International journal of Refugee Law 313-332

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