The European Union and its Democratic Deficit(s) : A descriptive idea-analysis

Abstract: Despite the EU’s profound commitment to uphold and promote democracy, scholars have throughout the years argued that the organization suffers from two separate, although seemingly related, democratic paradoxes and deficits: one focusing on the supranational EU-level and the Union at large, one addressing the national EU-level and the member-state components of the system. Despite the shared themes and verdicts of the EU as democratically defective – little to no attention has yet been paid to elaborate on how these debates might be connected.  In this thesis, by drawing on insights and perspectives from legitimacy theory, I find many similarities but also conflicting values and policy-recommendations between the two debates. Further, I argue that the debates appear to be linked not only by sharing a theoretical ground, but also as a policy-recommendation from the first debate might have contributed to entrench the unfolding developments leading up to the second debate.