Governance between expertise and democracy: the case of European Security

The European Union (EU) constitutes a multifarious security environment in which the demand for expert knowledge is on the rise. The objective of securing the sound specialized knowledge required for the EU's so-called comprehensive security strategy may not meet the requirement of being democratically accountable. There is hardly any objective knowledge basis for ‘experts’ in this field and different knowledge systems are connected to different validation and accountability procedures. A comprehensive security policy would blur the institutional and legal boundaries of the constitutional state. The deliberative approach to democratic governance offers some prescripts for achieving a comprehensive security policy involving humanitarian and civilian aspects alongside the military and technological ones. But deliberation cannot bear the burden of democratic legitimation.