Tailoring Representative Democracy to the European Union: Does the European Constitution Reduce the Democratic Deficit?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2005.00270.x
• Published date: 01 July 2005
• Date: 01 July 2005
• Author: Ben Crum

452 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Tailoring Representative Democracy

to the European Union: Does the

European Constitution Reduce the

Democratic Deficit?

Ben Crum*

Abstract: Even if the institutions of representative democracy that have developed in the

nation-state context cannot be simply transposed to the European Union, for practical

and normative reasons they do provide the main starting point for any reflection on the

EU’s ‘democratic deficit’. This article draws upon the Constitution prepared by the Euro-

pean Convention to reconstruct the concept of representative democracy in the EU.

Drawing on the proposals put forward, it identifies two distinctive challenges that need to

be overcome if the concept of representative democracy is to be successfully applied to the

EU: the multilevel character of the polity and the shift of the centre of political gravity

from legislative to executive politics. The article then examines the extent to which the

institutional proposals contained in the Constitution go to meet these two challenges and

also highlights some aspects in which these proposals fall short.

Introduction

As the European Union is a unique political construction beyond the Nation State, it

is by no means self-evident that we can simply project on it the democratic institutions

we know from the national level (cf. Schmitter, 1996; Majone, 1998; Héritier, 1999). A

different context may well ask for a different approach. Indeed, there is some appeal

in the suggestion that post-national political systems like the European Union require

a ‘third democratic transformation’, a wholly new concept of democracy after the

European Law Journal, Vol.11, No. 4, July 2005, pp. 452–467.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

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* Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. This paper has evolved as the debate on the EU’s draft Constitution has

gone along. Earlier versions of it, with the title ‘Throwing the Rascals out’, were presented at the Chaire

Hoover de philosophie politique et sociale à l’Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve December 2003

and at the CIDEL-conference on ‘Deliberative Constitutional Politics in the EU’,Albarracín (Zaragoza),

19–22 June 2003. I thank the participants of these seminars as well as Michal Mia¸skiewicz and Wouter

Coussens for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research has been made possible by

the support of a Marie Curie Fellowship of the European Community under contract number HPMF-

CT-2002–01706.

July 2005 Representative Democracy in the EU

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 453

directly democratic model of the Greek polis and the representative model of the

modern nation-state (Dahl, 1989).

Still, in practice most attempts to instil democracy on the EU start from the insti-

tutions that are characteristic of representative democracy in the Nation State. The

most obvious example is the European Parliament, that was originally conceived as an

assembly of national parliamentarians and then step by step—changing its name, the

introduction of direct elections, the expansion of its powers—has come to style itself

more and more on the example of national parliaments.

The Treaty Establishing a Constitution of Europe (TCEU) that was signed by the

EU Heads of Government on 29 October 2004 in Rome to a large extent reconfirms

the reliance on the Nation-State model of representative democracy.1To be sure, in a

specific title on ‘The Democratic Life of the Union’, the Constitution underlines the

importance of direct engagement of citizens and representative organisations in the

policy-making process. What is more, this title also provides for the opportunity for a

multitude of citizens to directly demand the submission of a legislative proposal

(TCEU, Article 47(4)). However, the legitimacy of the main decision-making proce-

dures essentially relies on the representative roles ascribed to the different institutions

involved, above all the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European

Commission and the European Council.

This article draws upon the deliberations and proposals of the European Conven-

tion to reconstruct the concept of representative democracy in the European Union. It

proceeds in three steps.The next section starts out with a short reminder of the strength

of the normative underpinnings of representative democracy. In section II, I then move

on to argue that if we are to apply representative democracy to the European Union,

we need to amend the traditional understanding of it on (at least) two key accounts.

First, there is a need to properly take account of the multilevel nature of the emerging

polity that requires the close and coordinated articulation of the two levels, the national

and the European, of democratic representation. Second, there is the more general phe-

nomenon that in modern, complex political system, the political point of gravity has

shifted from the act of legislation to that of execution. As a consequence, making rep-

resentative democracy work does not only require the imposition of parliamentary

authority over the legislative process but also giving it effective powers to scrutinise the

executive process. The remainder of the article then goes on to demonstrate to what

extent the institutional proposals contained in the European Constitution go to meet

these two challenges as well as bringing to light some aspects on which they have been

compromised.

I The Value of Representative Democracy

There is a widespread perception that there is a mismatch between the powers exercised

by the European Union and the presence of democratic controls.2Basically, it is this

1The Constitution will enter into force once it has been ratified by all 25 Member States. The ratification

process is expected to be concluded by Autumn 2006,but it may take longer if one or more states encounter

difficulties in ratifying the Treaty, for example due to a negative outcome of a national referendum.

2For an argument to the contrary, see Moravcsik (2002). Without engaging any further with Moravcsik’s

argument, I assume in this article that European politics does involve important political choices whether

it involves the definition of the terms of the internal market, the striking of the balance between market

liberalisation and the protection of public services and also in the handling of the decision of whether or

not things can in fact best be tackled at the European level.