Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy: An Institutional Ideal for Europe?

Abstract

Abstract The continuing effort to harmonize the laws of EU Member States and the prospect of extending EU membership to new states intensifies the debate already underway in the Atlantic political community about the connections between democracy and nation state as we have known it since the time of the American and French Revolutions. This chapter argues that the opening boundaries of the modern polity, the undeniable increase in heterogeneity that follows, and the manifold institutional responses that these changes in turn provoke are better seen as creating the occasion for, indeed in part anticipating, a radical redefinition of constitutional and democratic ideals, rather than as signs of democratic declension. The exploration of difference, as it may occur in choosing among diverse solutions to the pressing problems of daily life, can provide a basis for protecting the economically vulnerable and the politically disdained that may become as effective under emerging conditions as the policies of redistribution and judicial determination of rights have been in the world that is passing.

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