European Democratic Deficit Essay Example

The democratic deficit is a theory developed by scholars in order to illustrate that the European Union and its institutional bodies suffer from a lack of democracy (Wincott, 1998, p. 414). However, there are many definitions of the democratic deficit (Chryssochoou, 2000; Justice, 1996; Warleigh, 2003; Weiler, Haltern & Mayer, 1995) depending on the views and approaches of each scholar. Joseph Weiler's ‘standard version' of the democratic deficit is one of the most common definitions and it is a set of widely-used arguments by academics, scholars and the media (Weiler et al., 1995, cited by Follesdal & Hix, 2005, p. 4). It consists of five claims that explain why the EU can be called undemocratic and they are the following: a) there is an executive dominance because of European integration, which decreased parliamentary control, b) the weakness of the European Parliament, c) the lack of "European elections", d) the EU is "too distant" from the citizens and finally, e) the "policy drift", policies that do not enjoy the support of the majority of the citizens (Follesdal & Hix, 2005, pp. 4-6, and Weiler et al., 1995, pp. 6-10). Since the early 1990's, there has been an ongoing debate on the democratic deficit because there are many different ways in which the EU's political structure can be studied, as well as the fact that there are various theories of European integration and models of democracy. In fact, not all academics and scholars agree that a European democratic deficit even exists. Nonetheless, this essay will argue that it is valid to say that the EU suffers a democratic deficit and the aim is to provide evidence for its existence by focusing on the analysis of some of the "standard version's" claims. However, since the debate and the literature on this topic are massive, the first part of this essay will discuss the views of only two of the defenders of the democratic deficit because it is important to understand the reasons for this long-lasting