madison in brussels: the EU and the US as compound democracies
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Abstract The US and the EU have undergone a process of institutional convergence. While Madison argued that the US was subject to a systemic imperative to promote an anti-hegemonic order, the same has revealed itself to be true of the EU too – this because of the asymmetry of powers between its member states. However, because of the anti-hierarchical structure which supports it, an anti-hegemonic order is weak in terms of decision-making capacity. Thus, the price of the preservation of internal complexity is external ineffectiveness. The article considers the most appropriate trade-off between the two. The Madisonian approach to the compound of American states can help the EU in facing the dilemma of the integration process.
Keywords
European Union; American democracy; separation of powers; constitution-making
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nterpretation and analysis of the European Union (EU) is a growth industry. However, most of the literature examines the EU within or from a European perspective. When the EU is not considered an exceptional case, thus unsuitable for comparison, it is generally compared with European nation states, assumed to be the predominant (if not the natural) types of democratic organisation. This approach lies behind the heated debate surrounding the EU’s democratic deficit. When compared to parliamentary systems, the EU appears to be deficient in democratic terms because its power
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holders or decision makers do not enjoy direct popular legitimacy. Its critics seem to assume that the parliamentary model is the only viable solution to the question of the democratisation of the EU. Any institutional development is considered positive if it helps the EU to approach the parliamentary model, and negative if it does not. The political experience of European nation states has been based on the fusion of governmental powers, with the executive expressing a legislative majority and thus authorised to have the monopoly of decision-making power. Of
european political science: 4 2005 (188 – 198) & 2005 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/05 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
course, the legislative majority may be the outcome of different electoral and party processes. In consensual or consociational democracies, the legislative majority results from a long drawn-out process of consultation and bargaining between party elites after the election, resulting generally in an over-sized coalition government. In majoritarian or competitive democracies, the legislative majority results from bipolar or two-party electoral competition, resulting generally in one-party or limited coalition government. In both cases, decision-making power is concentrated in the cabinet or executive, which fuses the government with the parliament. Even those European democracies that introduced separation of powers at the territorial or vertical level (in federal form as in Germany, Austria or Belgium, or in quasi-federal form as in Spain, or in regional form as in Italy and France from the 1970 s and 1980 s, respectively) have
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