Democratizing the transnational polity: the European Union and the presuppositions for democracy

After briefly considering the problems of political authority and democratic reform typical of formal transnational institutions, this paper offers a theory of democratization for transnational polities. Democratizing a polity such as the European Union requires two conditions to be realized across borders: the emergence of transnational publics that create social relationships based on mutually recognized communicative freedom and the institutionalization of new normative powers of citizens that realize freedom as nondomination. In light of these conditions, the republican dimension of democratization can be made explicit in a conception of a democratic minimum, in which democratization depends upon the effective capacity of citizens to initiate deliberation. Current theories of cosmopolitan and transnational democracy (either from 'above' or from 'below') cannot elaborate sufficient institutional conditions that make democratization possible in a multilevel polity such as the EU.