How to Create Supra-National Institutions Democratically

Abstract

There are two distinct democratic deficits in the emerging European Union. On the one hand, ordinary citizens of the EU have very little meaningful influence on the political decisions made in their name by the centralized organs and agencies, such as the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament. Having produced some public expressions of discontent and alienation (Euro-fatigue), this problem has been discussed quite extensively, and various proposals have been made by politicians, Eurocrats, and academics for how EU institutions can be made more user-friendly. This elite debate highlights the second problem: Ordinary citizens of the EU have had very little meaningful influence on the designing of the emerging European institutions, which have been shaped and modified by a small politico-bureaucratic elite. And this elite is now likely to decide, quite undemocratically, what sorts of democratizing modifications they are going to implement in order to reduce public hostility to their intransparent and undemocratic rule. The present essay addresses only this second democratic deficit in institutional designing.¹

Many thanks to Dagfinn Føllesdal for the kind invitation to join him at the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo, where this essay was written, to Sverker Gustavsson for essential materials, and to Robert Goodin for valuable comments.