From Parliamentarism to Pluralism

John Coultrap

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1999, vol. 11, issue 1, 107-135

Abstract: Academic observers have long criticized the European Union for being plagued with a `democratic deficit', a critique that is based on the European parliamentary model of democracy. Although widely considered to be a valid foundation for democratic evaluation of the Union, the parliamentary model is irrelevant to the EU's supranational context and character. This irrelevance brings the mainstream democratic deficit literature into question. The American `pluralist' model, with its emphasis on societal interest groups and a fragmented governmental structure, provides a more appropriate foundation for democratic decision-making at the EU's supranational level. This framework explains recent contributions to the literature, and suggests a transition from the traditional democratic deficit critique to a new theoretical conception of democracy in the European Union.

Keywords: democracy; democratic deficit; democratic theory; European Union; pluralism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692899011001005 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:11:y:1999:i:1:p:107-135

DOI: 10.1177/0951692899011001005

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().