EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE PAPERS No. C-05-03 Peter Mair PopularAndreas Democracy Follesdal and and the Simon European Hix Union Polity EUROGOV is funded by the EU´s 6th Framework Programme, Priority 7 European Governance Papers EUROGOV ISSN 1813-6826 http://www.connex-network.org/eurogov/ The European Governance Papers are a joint enterprise by Date of publication: May 18, 2005 Popular Democracy and the European Union Polity © 2005 Peter Mair Peter Mair – Department of Political Science, Leiden University
[email protected] Citing this EUROGOV paper: Mair, Peter. 2005. Popular Democracy and the European Union Polity. European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) No. C-05-03, http://www.connex- network.org/eurogov/pdf/egp-connex-C-05-03.pdf. © Each EUROGOV Paper and its format and content (texts, images, data etc.) are protected by legislation on Intellectual Property, and may not be used, reproduced, distributed, modified, publicly disclosed, conveyed or transformed in any other way without the explicit permission of the Author(s). The common scientific citation is exempted from these property rights. - 2 - Peter Mair: Popular Democracy and the European Union Polity Abstract Although we still celebrate the late twentieth-century ‘victory of democ- racy’, our understanding of what democracy entails in both theory and practice is increasingly subject to a variety of qualifying definitions, many of which now seem to devalue the role of elections and electoral account- ability. This is also obviously seen in the politics of the European Union, where the efforts to displace conflict dimensions into arenas where democ- ratic authority is lacking, as well as the efforts to depoliticize issues that relate to European integration, have led to the development of a distinct political system in which the exercise of popular control and electoral ac- countability proves very difficult.