Reconsidering the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ – A deliberative perspective

Abstract

The debate on the ‘democratic deficit’ of the European Union is omnipresent at times when rapid intergovernmental and insufficiently legitimised policy decisions are taken in order to resolve the effects of the current Eurozone crisis. Taking a deliberative perspective on the question whether the EU actually suffers a ‘democratic deficit’, this thesis develops an analytical framework based on the normative cornerstones of deliberative theory. Contrary to previous work, it is argued that the EU and usual nation states are not simply comparable as concerns their democratic structure, but that the level of comparison has to be adequately lifted to the more abstract level of a political system. Therefore, this thesis chooses a systemic approach and incorporates the special features of the sui generis entity of the EU in its investigation. By thoroughly carving out the core assumptions from deliberative theory and identifying the minimal or necessary conditions of the concept of democracy proposed by deliberative theory, i.e. Deliberative Democracy, this investigation provides a theoretically deduced analytical framework, which is apt to give an answer to the guiding question, whether the EU (or any political system) suffers a ‘democratic deficit’. By way of illustration, the identified conditions are applied to the economic governance structure of the EU that evolved in the course of the Eurozone crisis in order to demonstrate the framework’s applicability. It is found that the demanding circular process of self-legislation proposed by deliberative theory is interrupted at several points and that the EU, in its current architecture, does suffer a ‘deliberative deficit’