Consent

Abstract

Most accounts of democracy in the European Union (EU) jump straight into an appraisal of standards under a given set of Union institutions. This omits the prior and arguably more important question of whether the processes by which Union institutions are formed are themselves democratic. Of course, not all matters of institutional design are determined by ‘decisions’ as opposed to adaptation, bricolage, or cumulative unintended consequences. As with many other political orders, academics debate whether ‘evolution’ or ‘moments’ have been the more important (Ackerman, 1998) in shaping the EU’s institutional development (Christiansen et al., 2001; Moravcsik, 1998).