democratic deficit

democratic deficit, an insufficient level of democracy in political institutions and procedures in comparison with a theoretical ideal of a democratic government.

The expression democratic deficit may be used to denote the absence or underdevelopment of key democratic institutions, but it may also be used to describe the various ways in which these institutions may fail to function properly (e.g., lack of transparency and accountability, technocratic decision making, inadequate participation of citizens in policy making). Evaluations of the level of democratic deficit focus on the procedural aspects of democracy, reflected in the mechanisms of representation and decision making. Therefore, the notion of democratic deficit encompasses distortions in the flow of influence from citizens to government. As such, it is closely associated with the issue of democratic legitimacy.

Although any democratic system may potentially suffer from a democratic deficit, the concept is most often used in the context of supranational institutions, the European Union (EU) in particular. The most popular criticism of the EU’s levels of democracy refers to the dispossession of national institutions that is not sufficiently compensated for at the EU level. In particular, the EU structure has been criticized for an inadequate level of parliamentary control over decision-making processes. First, unlike in the EU’s member states, the role of the European Parliament is marginal because the executive branch of government (the Council of the European Union and the European Commission) plays a key role in the legislative process. Second, because of its size, the EU is criticized for being too far removed from the ordinary citizens to adequately support democratic deliberation and participation in decision making and to effectively represent their interests. Another criticism points to the activities of EU institutions, arguing that they lack coordination and that the focus of EU politics remains dominated by the national-level procedures and cleavages. The EU is accused of being undemocratic mainly because the officeholders are not directly dependent and accountable to their constituents, whose preferences are therefore unlikely to be reflected in the decisions made.

However, these negative assessments of the democratic character of the EU have been challenged by scholars who point out that a parliamentary model of European democracy is not a suitable benchmark for assessing democracy at the EU level, because it is, like federalist states, a nonmajoritarian institution. Some scholars also argue that the level of the general public’s satisfaction with their influence on the EU-level political processes is difficult to establish, because the idea of European integration is still contested by a number of EU citizens. Moreover, democratic legitimacy in Europe is strongly linked to welfare issues, and, because the models of the welfare state vary radically across European states, it is impossible for the EU to take these welfare functions over and use them as a base for its democratic legitimacy. Therefore, although the increasing influence of the EU is recognized as a positive development, the conclusions about a democratic deficit in the EU seem to depend largely on the benchmarks used.