Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T16:31:39.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Europe's Democratic Deficits through the Looking Glass: The European Union as a Challenge for Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2007

Michael Goodhart
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Despite widespread disagreement about democratic deficits in the European Union (EU), most critics begin by conceiving democracy as a problem for the EU. Seeing the EU as undemocratic or insufficiently democratic, they devise institutional innovations to democratize it. These innovations seem to require breaking the traditional link between democracy and the nation-state, which in this context appears outmoded or inappropriate. This article challenges that approach, arguing that it gets the relationship between democracy and the sovereign state wrong—or at least, incomplete—by stressing modern democratic theory's empirical ties to the state while underestimating their normative significance. The complex interdependence of normative and empirical assumptions informing modern democratic theory means that detaching democracy from the state is much less straightforward than critics often imagine. The essay argues instead for conceiving the EU as a problem for democratic theory. Doing so reveals that democratic theory is ill-equipped to address recent changes in the configuration of rule and new structures of governance associated with Europeanization, European integration, and globalization more broadly. This change in perspective highlights important limits in recent democratic theorizing about the EU and clarifies the role of European debates in reinterpreting and reconstructing democracy in the age of globalization.Michael Goodhart is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he holds a secondary appointment in Women's Studies ([email protected]). He is grateful to Chris Bonneau, Mark Hallerberg, Andrew Lotz, John Markoff, Guy Peters, Alberta Sbragia, Dan Thomas, and to anonymous reviewers of this essay for their kind help and advice. He is also grateful to the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh for the chance to present an earlier version of this essay and appreciates the suggestions he received at that time.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aalberts, Tanja E. 2004. The future of sovereignty in multilevel goverance Europe: A constructivist reading. Journal of Common Market Studies 42 (1): 2346.Google Scholar
Andersen, Svein, and Kjell Eliassen, eds. 1996. The European Union: How Democratic Is It? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Bartelson, Jens. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beck, Ulrich. 2004. Cosmopolitical realism: On the distinction between cosmopolitanism in philosophy and the social sciences. Global Networks 4 (2): 13156.Google Scholar
Beetham, David, and Christopher Lord. 1998a. Legitimacy and the EU. New York: Longman.
Beetham, David, and Christopher Lord. 1998b. Legitimacy and the European Union. In Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice, and Citizenship, ed. A. Weale and M. Nentwich. London: Routledge.
Beitz, Charles R. 1991. Sovereignty and morality in international affairs. In Political Theory Today, ed. D. Held. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bellamy, Richard. 2003. Sovereignty, post-sovereignty, and pre-sovereignty: Three models of the state, democracy, and rights in the EU. In Sovereignty in Transition, ed. N. Walker. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Bellamy, Richard, and Dario Castiglione. 1998. The normative challenge of a European polity: Cosmopolitan and communitarian models compared, criticized and combined. In Democracy in the European Union, ed. A. Føllesdal and P. Koslowski. Berlin: Springer.
Bellamy, Richard, and Dario Castiglione. 2000. The uses of democracy: Reflections on the European democratic deficit. In Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation? ed. E. O. Eriksen and J. E. Fossum. London: Routledge.
Bellamy, Richard, and Dario Castiglione. 2003. Legitimizing the Euro-“polity” and its “regime”: The normative turn in EU studies. European Journal of Political Theory 2 (1): 734.Google Scholar
Bodin, Jean. 1992. On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from The Six Books of the Commonwealth. Ed. and trans. J. H. Franklin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bohman, James. 2004. Constitution making and democratic innovations: The European Union and transnational governance. European Journal of Political Theory 3 (3): 31537.Google Scholar
Burch, Kurt. 1994. The “properties” of the state system and global capitalism. In The Global Economy as Political Space, ed. S. J. Rosow, N. Inayatullah, and M. Rupert. Boulder, CO: Lynne-Rienner.
Cerny, Phillip G. 1996. Globalization and other stories: The search for a new paradigm for international relations. International Journal 51: 61737.Google Scholar
Choudry, Sujit. 2001. Citizenship and federations: Some preliminary reflections. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. K. Nicolaidis and R. Howse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Christiansen, Thomas. 1998. Legitimacy dilemmas of supranational governance: The European Commission between accountability and independence. In Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice, and Citizenship, ed. A. Weale and M. Nentwich. London: Routledge.
Costa, Oliver, Nicolas Jabko, Christian Lequesne, and Paul Magnette. 2003. Introduction: Diffuse control mechanisms in the European Union: Towards a new democracy. Journal of European Public Policy 10 (5): 66676.Google Scholar
Crombez, Christophe. 2003. The democratic deficit in the European Union: Much ado about nothing? European Union Politics 4 (1): 10120.Google Scholar
Decker, Frank. 2002. Governance beyond the nation-state: Reflections on the democratic deficit of the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy 9 (2): 25672.Google Scholar
Elazar, Daniel. 2001. The United States and the European Union: Models for their epochs. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. K. Nicolaidis and R. Howse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar. 2000. Deliberative supranationalism in the EU. In Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation? ed. E. O. Eriksen and J. E. Fossum. London: Routledge.
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar, and John Erik Fossum, eds. 2000a. Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation? London: Routledge.
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar, and John Erik Fossum. 2000b. Post-national integration. In Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation? ed. E. O. Eriksen and J. E. Fossum. London: Routledge.
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar, and John Erik Fossum. 2002. Democracy through strong publics in the European Union? Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (3): 40124.Google Scholar
Eriksen, Erik Oddvar, and John Erik Fossum. 2004. Europe in search of legitimacy: Strategies of legitimation assessed. International Political Science Review 25 (4): 43559.Google Scholar
Føllesdal, Andreas. 1998. Democracy and federalism in the European Union. In Democracy in the European Union, ed. A. Føllesdal and P. Koslowski. Berlin: Springer.
Føllesdal, Andreas. 2004. “Legitimacy Theories in the European Union.” University of Oslo: ARENA Center for European Studies.
Friese, Heidrun, and Peter Wagner. 2002. The nascent political philosophy of the European polity. Journal of Political Philosophy 10 (3): 34264.Google Scholar
Goodhart, Michael. 2001. Sovereignty: Reckoning what is real. Polity 34 (2): 24157.Google Scholar
Goodhart, Michael. 2005. Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization. New York: Routledge.
Grande, Edgar. 2000. Post-national democracy in Europe. In Democracy Beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed. M. T. Greven and L. W. Pauly. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Greven, Michael Th. 2000. Can the European Union finally become a democracy? In Democracy beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed. M. T. Greven and L. W. Pauly. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1995. Citizenship and national identity: Some reflections on the future of Europe. In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. Why Europe needs a constitution. New Left Review 11: 526.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Toward a cosmopolitan Europe. Journal of Democracy 14 (4): 86100.Google Scholar
Held, David. 1991. Democracy, the nation-state, and the global system. In Political Theory Today, ed. D. Held. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Held, David. 1996. Models of Democracy. 2d ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Héritier, Adrienne. 1999. Elements of democratic legitimation in Europe: An alternative perspective. Journal of European Public Policy 6 (2): 26982.Google Scholar
Hinsley, F.H. 1986. Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hirst, Paul, and Grahame Thompson. 1996. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1968. Leviathan. Ed. C. B. Macpherson. New York: Penguin Books.
Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 1997. The Making of a Polity: the Struggle over European Integration. European Integration online Papers (EIoP) 1 (4), accessed September 27, 2006.Google Scholar
Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2003. Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance. American Political Science Review 97 (2): 23343.Google Scholar
Howse, Robert, and Kalypso Nicolaidis. 2001. Introduction. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. K. Nicolaidis and R. Howse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jachtenfuchs, Markus. 1998. Democracy and governance in the European Union. In Democracy in the European Union, ed. A. Føllesdal and P. Koslowski. Berlin: Springer.
Kariel, Henry, ed. 1970. Frontiers of Democratic Theory. New York: Random House.
Kobrin, Stephen. 1998. Back to the future: Neomedievalism and the postmodern digital world economy. Journal of International Affairs 51 (2): 36186.Google Scholar
Koslowski, Peter. 1998. Fatherland Europe: On European and national identity and democratic sovereignty. In Democracy in the European Union, ed. A. Føllesdal and P. Koslowski. Berlin: Springer.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1986. Of systems, boundaries, and territoriality: An inquiry into the formation of the state system. World Politics 39 (1): 2752.Google Scholar
Kraus, Peter A. 2004. A union of peoples? Diversity and the predicaments of a multinational polity. In Political Theory and the European Constitution, ed. L. Dobson and A. Føllesdal. London: Routledge.
Kuper, Richard. 2000. Democratization: A constitutionalizing process. In Democratizing the European Union: Issues for the Twenty-first Century, ed. C. Hoskyns and M. Newman. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Landy, Marc, and Steven H. Teles. 2001. Beyond devolution: From subsidiarity to mutuality. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. R. Howse and K. Nicolaidis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laughlin, Martin. 2003. Ten tenets of sovereignty. In Sovereignty in Transition, ed. N. Walker. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Lehning, Percy. 1998. European citizenship: Between facts and norms. Constellations 4 (3): 34667.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1960. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. P. Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lord, Christopher. 1998. Democracy in the European Union. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press.
Lord, Christopher, and David Beetham. 2001. Legitimizing the EU: Is there a “post-parliamentary basis” for its legitimation? Journal of Common Market Studies 39 (3): 44362.Google Scholar
Lord, Christopher, and Paul Magnette. 2001. Notes towards a general theory of legitimacy in the European Union. Sussex, UK: Sussex European Institute.
Lord, Christopher, and Paul Magnette. 2004. E pluribus unum? Creative disagreement about legitmacy in the EU. Journal of Common Market Studies 42 (1): 183202.Google Scholar
MacCormick, Neil. 1995. The Maastricht urteil: Sovereignty now. European Law Journal 1 (3): 25966.Google Scholar
MacCormick, Neil. 1999. Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, Nation in the European Commonwealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Majone, Giandomenico. 1998. Europe's “democratic deficit”: The question of standards. European Law Journal 4 (1): 528.Google Scholar
Mancini, G. Federico. 1998. Europe: The case for statehood. European Law Journal 4 (1): 2942.Google Scholar
Manent, Pierre. 1997. Democracy without nations? Journal of Democracy 8 (2): 92102.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael. 1993. Nation-states in Europe and other continents: Diversifying, developing, not dying. Dædalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 12 (3): 11540.Google Scholar
Marks, Gary, Liesbet Hooghe, and Kermit Blank. 1996. European integration from the 1980s: State-centric v. multi-level governance. Journal of Common Market Studies 34 (3): 34178.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Moravcsik, Andrew. 2002. In defence of the “democratic deficit”: Reassessing legitimacy in the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (4): 60324.Google Scholar
Murphy, Alexander B. 1996. The sovereign state system as political-territorial ideal: Historical and contemporary considerations. In State Sovereignty as Social Construct, ed. C. Weber and T. J. Biersteker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Näsström, Sofia. 2003. What globalization overshadows. Political Theory 31 (6): 80834.Google Scholar
Newman, Michael. 1996. Democracy, Sovereignty, and the European Union. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Newman, Michael. 2000. Introduction. In Democratizing the European Union: Issues for the Twenty-first Century, ed. C. Hoskyns and M. Newman. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Newman, Stephen. 2000. Globalization and democracy. In Democracy Beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed. M. T. Greven and L. W. Pauly. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. 1991. Sovereignty: Outline of a conceptual history. Alternatives 16 (4): 42546.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Pauly, Louis W. 2000. Introduction: Democracy and globalization in theory and practice. In Democracy beyond the State? The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, ed. M. T. Greven and L. W. Pauly. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Pauly, Louis W., and Edgar Grande. 2005. Reconstituting political authority: Sovereignty, effectiveness, and legitimacy in a transnational order. In Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-first Century, ed. L. W. Pauly and E. Grande. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Peters, B. Guy, and Jon Pierre. 2004. Multi-level governance and democracy: A Faustian bargain? In Multi-level Governance, ed. I. Bache and M. Flinders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Philpott, Daniel. 2001. Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pogge, Thomas W. 1997. Creating supra-national institutions democratically: Reflections on the European Union's “democratic deficit”. The Journal of Political Philosophy 5 (2): 16382.Google Scholar
Rabkin, J.A. 2005. Law without Nations? Why Constitutional Government Requires Sovereign States. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Raik, Kristi. 2004. EU accession of Central and Eastern European countries: Democracy and integration as conflicting logics. East European Politics and Society 18 (4): 56794.Google Scholar
Roermund, Bert Van. 2003. Sovereignty: Unpopular and popular. In Sovereignty in Transition, ed. N. Walker. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Rosenau, James N. 1997. The complexities and contradictions of globalization. Current History 96 (613): 3604.Google Scholar
Rossiter, C., ed. 1961 [1787–88]. The Federalist Papers. New York, Mentor/Penguin.
Sbragia, Alberta M. 2003. “Post-National Democracy: A Challenge to Political Science?Presented at the Italian Political Science Association (SISP) meeting, Trento, September 15.
Scharpf, Fritz. 1997. Economic integration, democracy, and the welfare state. Journal of European Public Policy 4 (1): 1836.Google Scholar
Scharpf, Fritz. 1998. “Interdependence and Democratic Legitimation.” MPIfG Working Paper 98/2. Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
Scharpf, Fritz. 1999. Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2004. The European Union: Democratic legitimacy in a regional state? Journal of Common Market Studies 42 (5): 97597.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2005. Democracy in Europe: The impact of European integration. Perspectives on Politics 3 (4): 76179.Google Scholar
Schmitter, Philippe C. 1998. Is it really possible to democratize the Euro-polity? In Democracy in the European Union, ed. A. Føllesdal and P. Koslowski. Berlin: Springer.
Schmitter, Philippe C. 2000. How to Democratize the European Union—And Why Bother? Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Schmitter, Philippe C. 2004. Is Euro-federalism a solution or a problem? Tocqueville inverted, perverted or subverted? In Political Theory and the European Constitution, ed. L. Dobson and A. Follesdal. London: Routledge.
Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stepan, Alfred. 1999. Federalism and democracy: Beyond the U.S. model. Journal of Democracy 10 (4): 1934.Google Scholar
Strange, Susan. 1996. The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strange, Susan. 1997. The erosion of the state. Current History 96 (613): 3659.Google Scholar
Taylor, P.J. 1996. Embedded statism and the social sciences: Opening up to new spaces. Environment and Planning A 28: 191728.Google Scholar
Thaa, Winfried. 2001. “Lean citizenship”: The fading away of the political in transnational democracy. European Journal of International Relations 7 (4): 50323.Google Scholar
Walker, Neil. 2003. Late sovereignty in the European Union. In Sovereignty in Transition, ed. N. Walker. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Weale, Albert. 1998. Between representation and constitutionalism in the European Union. In Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice, and Citizenship, ed. A. Weale and M. Nentwich. London: Routledge.
Weiler, J.H.H. 1994. A quiet revolution: The European Court of Justice and its interlocutors. Comparative Political Studies 26 (4): 51034.Google Scholar
Weiler, J.H.H. 1995. Does Europe need a constitution? Demos, telos, and the German Maastricht decision. European Law Journal 1 (3): 21958.Google Scholar
Weiler, J.H.H. 1998. The case against the case for statehood. European Law Journal 4 (1): 362.Google Scholar
Weiler, J.H.H. 2001. Federalism without constitutionalism: Europe's Sonderweg. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. K. Nicolaidis and R. Howse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weiss, Linda. 1998. The Myth of the Powerless State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Wincott, Daniel. 1998. Does the European Union pervert democracy? Questions of democracy in new constitutionalist thought on the future of Europe. European Law Journal 4 (4): 41128.Google Scholar
Yack, Bernard. 2001. Popular sovereignty and nationalism. Political Theory 29 (4): 51436.Google Scholar
Zacher, Mark W. 1992. The decaying pillars of the Westphalian temple: Implications for international order and governance. In Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, ed. J. N. Rosenau and E.-O. Czempiel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zürn, Michael. 2000. Democratic governance beyond the nation-state: The EU and other international institutions. European Journal of International Relations 6 (2): 183221.Google Scholar
Zürn, Michael. 2004. Global governance and legitimacy problems. Government and Opposition 39 (2): 26087.Google Scholar
Zweifel, Thomas D. 2002. Who is without sin cast the first stone: The EU's democratic deficit in comparison. Journal of European Public Policy 9 (5): 81240.Google Scholar