The Democratic Deficit Debate: Competing Theories of Liberty and Democracy (original) (raw)
The myth of Europe's' democratic deficit'
2008
Third, democracy requires political equality. Without this there would not be a straightforward “rule by the people”. Rather, there would also be an element of rule “of some of the people by others of the people”. Political equality, in turn, comprises equality of votes (one person, one vote) and equality of voice (equal access of all points of view to the political agenda).
The Democratic Deficit of the European Union
Living Reviews in Democracy, 2009
The EU as the most developed international organization, provides a laboratory for observing the development of democratic structures outside its member-states. The democratic deficit debate thus has implications that reach beyond the EU and touch upon crucial issues of future developments within democratic theory. This review distinguishes between three different types of legitimacy, namely procedural, efficiency and social legitimacy, and authors are discussed according to which type of legitimacy that underlines their analysis of the democratic deficit. Most authors invoke one type of legitimacy as their basis, but a new strand is emerging that mixes different types of legitimacy when establishing normative criteria for the EU. It is concluded that, in order to further the debate, this new strand has potential to develop advanced normative models appropriate for democracy beyond the nation-state. 1 In Dahl's view, proponents of guardianship find the assumption that ordinary people can be counted on to understand and defend their own interests preposterous. Instead, power should be entrusted to a small group of people uniquely qualified to govern (Dahl 1989; 52).
The Problem of " Democratic Deficit " in the European Union
This study tries to understand the causes and effects of the problem of democratic deficit in the European Union (EU). There is a multitude of reasons and solutions regarding the democratic deficit in the EU, which lead to complex interpretations. Generally, academic literature on the issue of democratic deficit in EU relies on two opposing arguments. The majority argument is that there is democratic deficit in the EU; the minority argument rejects this view it. This study falls within the majority argument. The majority argument draws on the two dimensions of the EU. First argument asserts (institutional) that the EU's institutional design and structure is not democratic. Second argument (socio-psychological) claims that the EU is not capable of being a 'real' democracy in principle, since the structural and social prerequisites, on which democratic rule depends, are lacking at the European level.
Europe's 'Democratic Deficit': The Question of Standards
European Law Journal, 1998
Arguments about Europe’s democratic deficit are really arguments about the nature and ultimate goals of the integration process. Those who assume that economic integration must lead to political integration tend to apply to European institutions standards of legitimacy derived from the theory and practice of parliamentary democracies. We argue that such standards are largely irrelevant at present. As long as the majority of voters and their elected representatives oppose the idea of a European federation, while supporting far-reaching economic integration, we cannot expect parliamentary democracy to flourish in the Union. Economic integration without political integration is possible only if politics and economics are kept as separate as possible. The depoliticisation of European policy-making is the price we pay in order to preserve national sovereignty largely intact. These being the preferences of the voters, we conclude that Europe’s ‘democratic deficit’ is democratically justified.The expression ‘democratic deficit,’ however, is also used to refer to the legitimacy problems of non-majoritarian institutions, and this second meaning is much more relevant to a system of limited competences such as the EC. Now the key issues for democratic theory are about the tasks which may be legitimately delegated to institutions insulated from the political process, and how to design such institutions so as to make independence and accountability complementary and mutually supporting, rather than antithetical. If one accepts the ‘regulatory model’ of the EC, then, as long as the tasks delegated to the European level are precisely and narrowly defined, non-majoritarian standards of legitimacy should be sufficient to justify the delegation of the necessary powers.
Perspectives on Politics, 2007
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.
2008
This paper acknowledges the still unsettled debate on the EU democratic deficit by arguing that divergences among the scholars emanate from the methodological and the conceptual difficulties that the concept itself have when applied to the case of EU. Given the lack of a common ground for understanding the EU democratic deficit debate I propose an all-inclusive model ('Democratic Deficit Space') of how to understand the EU democratic deficit arguments in the enormous already existing literature. As a last but not least point this paper will suggest how we need to look at the EU democratic deficit, putting the emphasis on the 'deficit' term rather than on the 'democracy' term
Curbing the Deficit: Democracy After the European Constitution
Imprints , 2004
This study assesses the democratic potential of the draft Constitutional Treaty for Europe. It reviews the various sources of the democratic deficit in the European Union and examines the effect of some of the provisions of the draft Constitutional Treaty on the quality of democracy at the national and supranational level. The institutional strategies contained in the Treaty collide to create a policy dilemma: increasing democratic input or enhancing political accountability. It is argued that embracing the path of accountability, rather than that of democratic input, as a reform formula, would allow us to solve the EU democratic deficit without undermining the Union’s institutional efficiency, and without jeopardizing the formation of a European political community. This line of institutional development is in tune with the post-sovereign and postnational nature of power relations on the continent in the early 21st century.
Understanding the EU democratic deficit
Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science, 2008
This paper acknowledges the still unsettled debate on the EU democratic deficit by arguing that divergences among the scholars emanate from the methodological and the conceptual difficulties that the concept itself have when applied to the case of EU. Given the lack of a common ground for understanding the EU democratic deficit debate I propose an all-inclusive model (Democratic Deficit Space) of how to understand the EU democratic deficit arguments in the enormous already existing literature. As a last but not least point this paper will suggest how we need to look at the EU democratic deficit, putting the emphasis on the deficit term rather than on the democracy term.