The European Union democratic deficit: Habermas, pragmatism, and multiperspectival theory

The general aim of this study is to consider how best to realize a transnational democracy in the European Union (hereafter EU). This issue is multifaceted, dealing not only with the democratic nation-state as such, but also with the further democratization of the existing body of law and treaty legislation that binds together this unique transnational order.; To put the main problem a different way: In light of increased political and legal integration at the level of the European Union, what can be done not only to ensure the enduring democratic status of Member States but also to foster democratic relations among Member States? Restated in the parlance of democratic political theory, what can be done to legitimate the transfer of decision-making from the more democratic procedures of Member States to the seemingly less democratic practices of the European Union? This decision-making authority ceded from the democratic states of the EU over to a different transnational level constitutes what scholars have termed the democratic deficit.; Habermas responds to the democratic deficit by calling for an explicit EU constitution. He defends a minimal threshold of democratic legislation whereby citizens are the authors of the laws to which they are held subject. Habermas seeks to emulate the successes of the historical nation-state at the higher EU level.; Democratic experimentalists offer a pragmatic account of politicizing human rights that views rights as responses to shared social problems. Their proposal does not rely upon Habermas's legislative model of collective willing. Instead, democratic participation can take place through novel institutions like the Open Method of Coordination.; In agreement with democratic experimentalists, multiperspectival theorists also reject the model of a European collective will. However, they provide a distinctly normative view of multiple perspective-taking, a non-hierarchical form of federalism, and a novel account of social space and time.; My proposal to democratize the EU draws on the potentials of its emerging political institutions for realizing basic human rights. Instead of the self-determination of a single locus of popular sovereignty, these institutions mediate overlapping sovereignties in accord with a republican view of freedom as non-domination.