Democracy in the European Union

Aiming to capture the dominant character of the relationship between democracy and European integration, this book offers an account of alternative approaches to the origins, nature, and development of the "democratic deficit" of the European Union. Its central thesis is that such a "deficit'" stems as much from the inadequacy of existing institutional arrangements to meet the requirements of democratic shared-rule as it does from the absence of a traditional demos, capable of directing its democratic claims to and via the central institutions.