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

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.