May 27, 2014

Whether it comes to the Iron Throne or the European Commission presidency, every claim to power has its strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately however, he who pays the piper, will always call the tune. Here’s what Game of Thrones can teach us about the struggle for the EU’s top job.

Spoiler alert: do not read this if you haven’t yet watched the first few episodes of season 4 of Game of Thrones.

1. Every claim has its strengths and weaknesses #



Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen and Jean-Claude Juncker – throne pretenders.

Pictures: HBO.com; picture alliance / dpa #

In the immensely popular HBO-show Game of Thrones, an epic story spanning seventy hour-long TV-episodes revolves around the struggle for the Iron Throne, the holder of which rules all seven kingdoms of a fictional realm. While some pretenders to the Throne may appeal to the audience more than others, all assert claims that carry both strengths and weaknesses. For instance, Stannis Baratheon is the eldest brother to the previous king and therefore his only rightful heir, but he also uses destructive dark magic to increase his sway. Daenerys Targaryen on the other hand brings equality and freedom to all people of Essos, yet her claim rests on being the last survivor of an old dynasty whose heyday may not be remembered by the people of Westeros.

Similarly, in the increasingly unpopular realm of EU politics, there are many potential pretenders to the EU’s Iron Throne, i.e. the European Commission presidency. In an effort to increase its institutional influence within the EU, the European Parliament has put forward five main candidates for the job – the green duo José Bové and Ska Keller, the socialist Martin Schulz, the liberal Guy Verhofstadt and the christian-democrat Jean-Claude Juncker. It is the latter who yesterday made his claim to the EU’s top job, stating he is the “only rightful next president of the Commission”.

Mr Juncker finds his main strenght in his political group’s victory in the EP elections this past Sunday, in which the EPP won 212 seats, 27 more than Mr Schulz’s socialist group (185 seats). A more fundamental basis for Mr Juncker’s (or indeed any so-called Spitzenkandidat’s) bid for the Commission job is that his appointment would decrease the EU’s democratic deficit, since the European people have been able to indirectly vote him into office. The EP lead candidates have travelled all over Europe in the past months in an attempt to make this clear to the average voter.

For this argument to carry any substance, European voters had to show up en masse to cast their vote. This however, did not happen. Despite an EP-spokesperson calling the voter turnout “historic” because an increase of 0.09% compared to 2009 “reversed” a long-standing trend of decline, the low turnout is a major weakness for Juncker’s claim. The heads of government in the European Council, elected by a far larger share of their populations, will find it easy to dismiss his claim on legitimacy grounds. Admittedly, this argument is not new, but that does not make it any less valid.

Moreover, a more thorough look at the election’s results reveals that this slight increase of the average turnout was mainly driven by an increased share of voters in a select number of mostly populous member states (i.e. Spain, Germany, France, UK). In two of these countries, Euroscepticism surged. In addition, the Spitzenkandidaten’s bid seems to suffer from a weakness similar to that of Daenerys Targaryen’s claim. The low and decreasing turnout numbers in Central and Eastern Europe show that the East cares as little for the EP’s leaders as the people of Westeros care about the platina-blonde slave liberator in the East.

2. He who pays the piper, calls the tune #

For all his arrogant displays of power and mistreatment of women, small animals and lowly servants, the late King Joffrey was never truly in charge of King’s Landing, nor of the Seven Kingdoms. He merely served at the mercy of the richest man in Westeros, his grandfather and Hand of the King, Tywin Lannister, who despised his nephew, but could easily control him. Equally, Joffrey’s predecessor and father Robert Baratheon owed both his usurption of the Throne and his long reign to the riches and clout of the Lannisters. This suggests that whoever sits on the Iron Throne will ultimately not matter, as his or her positions will inevitably be heavily influenced by the balance of (financial) power in the realm.



Tywin Lannister: “Any man who must say “I am the king”, is no true king.”

Again, an analogy can be made with the political economy of the EC presidency. The EP’s campaign is based on a loose interpretation of the Lisbon’s Treaty, and was intended to give voters the false impression that they can directly choose the Commission’s president and its policies. A careful reading of the infamous Art. 17(7) of the TEU however shows that the EU’s Member States still hold the prerogative of presenting a candidate to the European Parliament, who can then be elected by the EP with a simple majority.

If the European Council were to present the EP with someone other than its own lead candidates, Mr Schulz said that would make him “very, very angry” and that it would lead to a major crisis between the EP and the Council. But even if Schulz could get a blocking majority together in the Parliament that could force the Council to pick one of the Spitzenkandidaten, it would not impact the way policy is made in the EU, as this is a function of both the institutional and political balance of power.

In case of a Spitzenkandidat as Commission president, the institutional balance of power would remain unchanged: in most policy areas, the Commission proposes, and the EP and Council co-decide in different configurations – in unanimity, or with qualified or simple majority. A Commission president from the EP, appointed after an enduring period of inter-institutional shutdown, would find himself dealing with a reluctant Council and would have very little political capital left to invest in policy priorities.

The EU’s political balance of power is on the other hand almost entirely defined by the economic and financial positions of the different Member States, as evidenced time and time again in the handling of the Eurocrisis. A Commission president handpicked by the European Parliament cannot change the political dynamics between debtor and creditor countries in the Council. Much like in Westeros, the financial balance of power will continue to define policy-making, making Angela Merkel very much the Tywin Lannister of Brussels.

3. Power is a social construct #

The above offers a bleak rationalist view, but proponents of institutional change in the EU may find solace and inspiration in a brilliant scene from Season 3’s pivotal episode “The Climb”. As Lord Varys and Lord Baelish, who serve on the King’s advisory Small Council, discuss recent developments in the capital, they arrive at the subject of the realm. “The realm,” Baelish says, “do you know what the realm is? (…) A story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it’s a lie.” To which Lord Varys, who owes his career to a penchant for back-door politics and loyal service to the powers that be, ponders: “But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.” Baelish replies: “Chaos isn’t a pit. It’s a ladder.”



Petyr Baelish, played by Aidan Gillen

Power is indeed a social construct, and how the balance of power affects policy-making ultimately depends on institutions’ conceptions of themselves and others. As Alexander Wendt posited in his seminal work on anarchy: “it is collective meanings that constitute the structures which organize our actions”. The EP’s leadership took a gamble by attempting to redefine the collective meaning we give to the Parliament’s role, framing it as a source of legitimacy and democratic accountability in selecting the Commission’s president. The Spitzenkandidaten will hope that the resulting chaos will turn into a ladder – but I fear, as argued above, that voters have already called their bluff simply by not showing up.

Time will tell if the EU’s top job will fall to another Lord Varys (e.g. Finnish PM Jyrki Katainen), or whether an innovative Lord Baelish will emerge from the chaos to lead us into a new era of governance. In the meantime, we can all rejoice in watching another episode of our two favourite shows in town.

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