Article EJPT

European Journal of Political Theory

0(0) 1–25
The European Union as ! The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
a demoicracy: Really sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1474885116656573
a third way? ept.sagepub.com

Miriam Ronzoni
University of Manchester, UK

Abstract
Should the EU be a federal union or an intergovernmental forum? Recently, demoicrats
have been arguing that there exists a third alternative. The EU should be conceived as a
demoicracy, namely a ‘Union of peoples who govern together, but not as one’
(Nicolaı̈dis). The demoi of Europe recognise that they affect one another’s democratic
health, and hence establish a union to guarantee their freedom qua demoi – which most
demoicrats cash out as non-domination. This is more than intergovernmentalism,
because the demoi govern together on these matters. However, if the union aims at
protecting the freedom of the different European demoi, it cannot do so by replacing
them with a ‘superdemos’, as federalists want. This paper argues that demoicracy does
possess distinctive normative features; it claims, however, that an institutional choice
between intergovernmentalism and federalism is necessary. Depending on how we
interpret what the non-domination of demoi requires, demoicracy will either ground
a specific way of practicing intergovernmentalism or a specific form of federalism.
It cannot, however, ground an institutional model which is genuinely alternative to both.

Keywords
Demoicracy, political theory of the European Union, federalism, intergovernmentalism,
republicanism, domination of states, freedom as non-domination

Introduction
Should the EU be a full-blown federal union or merely an intergovernmental forum
of fully sovereign states? This is a central question in EU scholarship across several
disciplines. Similarly central is the question around the EU’s alleged ‘democratic
deficit’, namely its imperfect democratic accountability to those to whom its rules
and regulations apply. The two debates are largely intertwined, with federalists and

Corresponding author:
Miriam Ronzoni, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: [email protected]

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

2 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

intergovernmentalists often taking opposite views on what, if anything, is demo-

cratically wanting about the EU.
Recently, however, a still fairly self-contained (yet rapidly expanding) literature
has been arguing that the choice between a Europe of states and a European
‘Superstate’ (Morgan, 2007) is based on a false dichotomy, and that this is due
to a misunderstanding about the kind of democratic ideal that the EU should
embody.1 According to such a body of literature, there exists a viable alternative
to both institutional models. What is more, this alternative not only constitutes a
desirable ideal in and of itself but is also a more faithful reconstruction of the
original motivation behind the project of European integration as well as of its
ongoing aspiration. The idea, in a nutshell, is the following: the EU is – and its
performance should be normatively assessed as that of – a demoicracy, namely a
‘Union of peoples [not a people] who govern together, but not as one’ (Nicolaı̈dis,
2013: 351). The demoi of Europe recognise that they unavoidably affect one
another’s democratic health in problematic ways, and that this generates reciprocal
obligations. They therefore establish a union to guarantee their joint and reciprocal
freedom qua demoi – which most demoicrats cash out, in a republican spirit, as
non-domination. This is much more than intergovernmental multilateralism,
because the demoi genuinely govern together on the matters that concern their
reciprocal freedom. However, the institutional model that stems from this must
be faithful to what the demoicratic union is a union of. If the union aims at pro-
tecting the freedom of the different (and inherently diverse) European demoi, then
it cannot permissibly do so by replacing them with a European ‘superdemos’. On
the contrary, it must protect their diversity and their democratic self-determination.
Thus, demoicracy is a genuine third way (Nicolaı̈dis, 2003, 2013) – or, according to
the insightful metaphor used by Nicolaı̈dis (2013), a decision neither to remain on
the northern bank of the Rubicon nor to cross it, but to navigate its waters instead.
It is a third way in institutional terms, because demoicracy is a proper governing
union (not an intergovernmental forum), but it is inescapably different from a
traditional federal union. It is a third way in democratic terms, because it is
a form of democratic government (hence, the EU can be the kind of body which
can have a democratic deficit problem), but one where the democratic equality that
must be achieved is that among the different demoi or peoples, rather than indi-
viduals, of the EU. Demoicrats therefore reject the assumption that each democ-
racy needs its own demos: a specific form of democracy can be upheld by a plurality
of (interdependent, yet sovereign) demoi. The alleged democratic deficit of the
EU must hence be assessed according to this demoicratic standard.
Is demoicracy really a third way, however? In this paper, I critically assess the
claim that it is and issue a mixed verdict.2 I argue that demoicracy does possess
distinctive normative features. However, an institutional choice between intergo-
vernmentalism and federalism must be made in order to realise those very features.
When we try to settle the question of what institutional shape the normative ideal
of demoicracy should take, we must specify what it means for different demoi to
not dominate each other. And depending on which choices we make on that front,
demoicracy will either ground a very specific (and specifically demanding, or rich)

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 3

way of practicing intergovernmentalism, or an equally specific (and specifically

cautious, or thin) form of federalism. It cannot, however, ground an institutional
model which is genuinely alternative to both.
The argument is structured as follows. Section introduces some distinctions and
makes some conceptual points. In particular, it (a) distinguishes between the prob-
lem of the EU’s democratic deficit and that of its institutional form and (b) reflects
on the interplay between empirical and normative claims in both debates. Section 3
attempts to reconstruct the very ideal of demoicracy, by both offering an exegesis of
the current literature and filling some of its gaps. Section 4 contends that, depend-
ing on how one interprets the republican ideal of non-domination, the reciprocal
non-domination of interdependent peoples, which demoicracy aims to realise, will
necessarily imply a choice for either a federalism or an intergovernmentalism of
sorts. Demoicracy constitutes, therefore, a distinctive way of capturing the ideal of
equality between different yet interdependent peoples, but cannot ground a fully
distinctive institutional model of multi-level polity (i.e., one that is neither federal
nor intergovernmental). Yet, it can offer guidance to steer either intergovernmental
or federal instruments in specific directions, so as to better embody the idea of
democratic equality between demoi. Section 5 concludes by making two partial
concessions.

Two debates and the normative–empirical interplay

within them
In order to understand what the demoicratic proposal is, and whether it succeeds in
the aims it sets for itself, we must first have a clearer grasp of the debates to which it
seeks to contribute. As mentioned in the introduction, two interdisciplinary debates
dominate EU scholarship. The first concerns the federal or intergovernmental
nature of the EU; the second its alleged democratic deficit. Doing full justice to
these long, incredibly rich and multi-disciplinary debates here is simply impossible;
I shall limit myself to sketching the kernel of the problems that sits at the centre of
each of the two, respectively.
The question asked in the first debate is whether we should envisage the EU as a
forum of sovereign states or as a federal union of sorts. Federalists advocate an EU
some of whose rulings apply to EU citizens directly and trump domestic laws and
regulations. In other words, the EU should have some sovereign powers of its own.
In a federation, states relinquish full control over the possible developments and
implications of their cooperation – and in so doing, they may turn out to be obliged
to do things against their preferences as it is not in their power to stop decisions
(Nugent, 2006). Federalism thus takes inter-state relations beyond cooperation into
integration, and thereby involves some loss of national sovereignty. Diagnostic or
empirical advocates of EU federalism typically argue that the EU already has some
such features (and, often, that it should acquire even more); normative advocates
that it should. The reasons why it should, in turn, may vary. Some may be purely
strategic (e.g., enhancing the geopolitical power of the European region) or prob-
lem solving (e.g., establishing a fiscal union capable of delivering important social

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

4 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

services in a context where this is increasingly difficult for states). Others may be
based on the solidaristic aim of strengthening a European identity, thus overcom-
ing nationalism. For the EU to be a federation, it needs to be able to take some
decisions without the unanimous consensus of its member states, who therefore
should not have veto power over all matters (i.e., they should relinquish full con-
trol). For those who argue that the EU already is a federation, this is already the
case in some areas where qualified majority voting applies – and these are suffi-
ciently ‘core’ areas to warrant a federal interpretation, although more integration
of this kind is welcomed.
Intergovernmentalists contend, instead, that the EU should be conceived of as a
‘Europe of states’ whose governments cooperate to offset negative policy external-
ities as well as to enhance their internal problem-solving capacity (Moravcsik,
1993), whilst retaining full control over the conditions and consequences of their
cooperation. Again, empirical arguments point out that this is what the EU is, as
any accurate analysis of its institutions and laws shows it not to have any mean-
ingful sovereign powers of its own. It is true that qualified majority voting applies
in several areas, but as long as member states are free to leave, their not doing so
can be taken as an expression of their overall preferences. Normative arguments for
intergovernmentalism, in turn, are based either on its virtues (since international
coordination can augment, rather than restrict, the ability of governments to
achieve domestic goals (Moravcsik, 1993) or on the inappropriateness of federal
conceptions for the European context. It is argued, for instance, that Europe lacks
a demos with the shared public culture that is necessary to sustain a federal union.
Alternatively, the claim is put forward that when the institutions that govern over
us as so high up and remote from us, the risks of technocratisation and bureau-
cratisation are prohibitively high. Normative intergovernmental arguments can
sometimes even acknowledge that some steps towards a more federal state of affairs
have already been taken, and advocate their undoing (Streeck, 2014). Predictably,
intergovernmentalists argue that consensus should be the norm for most or all
decision making within the EU. Federalists often argue that intergovernmentalism
fails by its own standards. Its main aim is to allow states to solve common prob-
lems and thereby amplify their internal problem-solving capacity; however,
uncoerced consensus is often hardest to achieve precisely on those issues where a
solution is most needed, as crucial interests often diverge. When this occurs, the
risk is either to agree on highly suboptimal solutions or for multilateralism to
degenerate into power politics.
The debate on the democratic deficit consists in a cluster of different complaints
about the lack of democratic legitimacy of the EU. These are related to one another
but only up to a point: there is, in other words, no single definition of what the
democratic deficit is to begin with.3 The first set of complaints points to the increase
in executive power and a decrease in national parliamentary control in the EU area,
whereby the increase of executive power occurs both at the member state and at the
EU level, with the two being of course mutually reinforced. A key aspect of this
phenomenon at the EU level is the power to initiate legislation which the European
Commission – an unelected and arguably unaccountable body – possesses.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 5

A key aspect of this first set of complaints is that the EU drives a wedge between
EU citizens and those who govern them – both in terms of perceived distance of the
former from the latter and in terms of a ‘drift’ of implemented policies from actual
democratic preferences. Other complaints concern the weakness of the only prop-
erly democratic institution of the EU, the European Parliament, because of its
highly limited legislative competences and because of the absence of genuinely
‘European’ elections (EU elections may have spectacularly low turnouts; cam-
paigns focus on national issues more than on EU ones; etc.). Some further com-
plaints identify consensual decision making as the chief modus operandi of the EU,
and lament its undemocratic nature – for a consensus among governments may
well go against what the majority of EU citizens want. Others still are preoccupied
with the ‘no demos thesis’: a jurisdiction without a demos cannot take democratic
decisions worth the name. Only the presence of a demos – through the mechanisms
of public deliberation, debate, and preference formation that can uniquely occur
within it – can confer democratic legitimacy to processes of decision making.
A further, crucial concern is the lack of spaces of political contestation within
the EU (Follesdal and Hix, 2006): democracy occurs, not when policies simply
‘happen’ to match citizens’ preferences (and even that might not occur anyway;
see the first set of complaints) but when they do so because they are responsive to
them in a way that is allowed by genuine mechanisms of contestation. Finally,
some complaints are more specifically concerned with the anomalous structure of
the EU. It is argued, in particular, that both equality among EU member states (as
embodied in the Council and in all consensual decisions taken by the EU) and
equality among EU citizens (as embodied by the European Parliament and quali-
fied majority voting) could, in principle, constitute a form of democratic legitim-
ation – and that the democratic problem of the EU lies in the fact that it currently
combines elements of both in contradictory and sometimes mutually defeating
ways.4 This is what is sometimes called the ‘structural’ democratic deficit of the EU.
Often enough, the two debates are considered to be one and the same thing.
Advocates of ‘more’ democracy within the EU often argue in favour of a stronger
role for the European Parliament as the voice of the European people and are
therefore usually perceived as defenders of both democracy and supranational sov-
ereignty or federalism. The case for federalism is taken to be a case for democracy
writ large, capable of implementing decisions that are taken by, and binding for, all
European citizens. Federalists often argue that transforming the EU into a proper
federal polity would also settle the question of its democratic accountability – for
EU citizens, like citizens of any federal union, would finally be able to exercise
democratic control over the institutions that apply to them through the normal
channels of any liberal democracy. Intergovernmentalists, instead, typically take
two routes. Some contend that the EU has no democratic deficit problem to begin
with (Moravcsik, 2002) – largely because (like any other intergovernmental forum)
it is not an organisation apt for democratic accountability; it is the governments of
its member states that are accountable to their citizens for the kind of foreign policy
they pursue within it. Others argue instead that its democratic deficit lies precisely
in its having problematically moved beyond its intergovernmental vocation

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

6 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

(for instance, on matters of foreign or monetary policy), because, in so doing, it has

unduly limited the room for democratic self-determination of its members states.
The disagreement between federalist and intergovernmental conception of the EU
seems therefore to be largely about the role and place of democracy within it. Thus,
both camps often end up suggesting that their favoured solution to the institutional
shape of the EU is also a solution to its democratic deficit. The ‘structural demo-
cratic deficit’ thesis seems to further strengthen the idea that the two debates are
about the same issue. This thesis suggests that the lack of democratic legitimacy
within the EU is due to the fact the EU is neither a supranational union proper nor
a pure intergovernmental organisation. If it were the former, the democratic prin-
ciple of equality among citizens would have to prevail; if it were the latter, the same
would be true for the (intergovernmentally democratic) principle of equality of all
states – and it would be the business of each and every state to respect the demo-
cratic equality of all its own citizens. By having a mix of both, the EU is trapped in
a system whereby, because of the unclear and sometimes conflicting nature of the
two principles, some actors and constituencies are systematically underrepresented
and other systematically overrepresented (Bellamy and Kröger, 2013).
Finally, it is worth highlighting a striking feature of the literature on the insti-
tutional shape of the EU: we are not facing two completely parallel debates – one
on whether the EU is and one on whether the EU should be federal or intergov-
ernmental. Empirical scholars mainly attempt to offer a diagnosis of what kind of
polity the EU is – but, in so doing, they usually also make claims about the desir-
ability of certain institutional features and reforms. They reflect on what the cur-
rent key institutional aspects of the EU are and attempt to reconstruct,
interpretively, its historical trajectory. In so doing, however, they almost always
provide assessments on which further institutional developments it would be wise
and/or desirable to pursue (or not). Intergovernmentalists typically claim that it
makes sense for the EU to be or remain intergovernmental5; warn against not
sufficiently thought through processes of further integration (Scharpf, 1999); and
even pledge for the undoing of some of its steps (Streeck, 2014). A similar inter-
mingling of empirical and normative arguments prevails among federalists.
Historical arguments about the original mission of the EC/EU are used in order
to push for a reinvigoration of the process of integration during sluggish phases; or
the diagnostic claim is made that certain contradictions within the current structure
of EU can only be solved if the already advanced process of integration is ‘com-
pleted’. On the other hand, normative political theorists working on the EU usually
refrain from developing normative standards that are parachuted on the EU from a
Platonic realm of ideals. On the contrary, they are almost always motivated by the
idea that one should critically assess the EU by employing, as much as possible, the
standards that the EU has set for itself. For instance, they typically point out that
their normative recommendations rely, among other things, on an interpretation of
the original mission of the process of European integration, of the will of the
European people (or peoples), or both.6 Thus, for instance, normative federalists
often lament the slowness of the process of integration largely because, among
other things, they think that it is a betrayal of the very mission of the EU.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 7

Nicolaı̈dis, in arguing for demoi-cracy, also embraces this intermediate standpoint,

and calls it ‘normative inductivism’ (2013: 357): a normative-inductive approach is
one which tells us how the EU ought to be on the basis, not of first principles alone,
but also of ‘the deep texture of European history, law, and politics (Nicolaı̈dis,
2013)’. In a language more familiar to political theory, we might say that most
normative theories of the EU are to some extent practice-dependent (Sangiovanni,
2008): they ground an account of what the EU should be on, among other things,
an interpretation of its point and purpose from the point of view of its participants.
As long as such point and purpose is not independently objectionable – as long as it
is not, for instance, incompatible with independent and relatively uncontroversial
moral principles, such as minimal ideas of equal concern and respect for all moral
agents (Sangiovanni, 2008: 163) – it should be the guiding criterion to formulate
normative and institutional recommendations. This seems to reflect the conviction
that Europe belongs to Europeans – their history, their commonality, and what
they fundamentally want to make out of the European project. If, say, we cannot
reasonably detect a grain of federal spirit in the ‘deep texture of European history,
law, and politics’, then our theories of EU justice, legitimacy or democracy should
reflect that. This, of course, does not mean that the EU should be what the (major-
ity of) Europeans want it to be at a given time, period. An institution can fail to be
faithful to its point and purpose on grounds of, for instance, weakness of the will or
a temporary prevailing of sheer selfish interests on the part of its members.
Demoicrats vindicate the demoicratic ideal in the same practice-dependent or
normative-inductive spirit, i.e., as something which constitutes the original mission
as well as the ongoing shared goal of the process of European integration – albeit
one which Europeans have failed time and again.7 Since the demoicratic literature
shares this feature with the broader debate on the institutional nature of the EU,
I shall also work within this paradigm.8 My claim shall be that, even if demoicracy
is the right practice-dependent ideal – i.e., even if it captures the ‘spirit’ of the EU
correctly – realising it might necessitate a choice between an intergovernmental and
a federal institutional form. As such, the argument of this paper might leave
unmoved those who think that normative and institutional ideals should be
completely independent of such interpretive considerations, and only mirror-
independent moral principles.

The ideal of EU demoicracy

The previous section has established two points: (1) both intergovernmentalists and
federalists claim that their favoured institutional proposal is also a solution to the
democratic deficit of the EU; (2) both debates are characterised by the interplay
between normative and empirical claims in a normative-inductive or practice-
dependent spirit. The advocates of demoicracy follow the lead of the debate with
respect to both (1) and (2), but make a crucial further move: they argue that both
intergovernmentalists and federalists are wrong about what institutional form the
EU should take, because they misinterpret the type of democratic ideal that the EU
should aspire to embody. In other words, they fail in their interpretive exercise.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

8 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

The EU should neither be the expression of the equal democratic power of all
European citizens nor a forum for multilateral cooperation which leaves all mean-
ingful democratic questions at the domestic level. Instead, it should be conceived as
the project to achieve a ‘Union of peoples who govern together, but not as one’
(Nicolaı̈dis, 2013: 351). And Nicolaı̈dis is adamant that this is not just a disembo-
died normative ideal, but a claim based on the rich history of the process of
European integration. The creation of a ‘Union of peoples who govern together,
but not as one’ is the most plausible reconstruction of the point and purpose of
such an integration process.
What does this mean, however? As has been noted before (Lacey, 2015), whilst
the demoicratic ideal as the appropriate model for the EU has been getting some
traction as of late, the concept as well as its institutional implications remain
largely vague – due in part to the fact that the term is not used in an identical
way by all its advocates.9 In this section, I provide an account of the demoicratic
ideal which attempts to remain faithful to the motivations of its advocates – and
indeed largely draws on their work – but offers a more unified and comprehensive
vision of what it constitutes and aims to achieve. In so doing, the present section
offers not only a description but also an active reconstruction of the concept of
demoicracy, which partly draws on exegetic works, partly attempts to fill concep-
tual gaps in the current debate.
As the unconventional name suggests, a demoi-cracy is a proper union with gov-
erning features (a kratos), but its ‘citizens’ are the macro-agents constituted by the
different peoples (or demoi) of Europe, rather than EU individual citizens taken as a
unified European demos. A demoicracy, unlike an intergovernmental organisation,
is a kratos proper, but one that is jointly held by the different democratic peoples of
the EU. The demoi of Europe, under this interpretation, do more than merely pursue
mutually beneficial multilateral strategies through their governments/states. They
instead reciprocally acknowledge that they: (1) have mutual obligations to respect
one another’s freedom qua demoi and that they (2) unavoidably affect one another
(qua demoi) in problematic ways. They recognise, in particular, that their internal
democratic processes might have problematic democratic externalities for
each other: some decisions taken by a demos might undermine the capacity of
other demoi to exercise their own internal democratic self-determination.10
They thus acknowledge, not only their mutual interdependence broadly speaking,
but also their democratic interdependence – namely, that they have the power
to affect the health of one another’s democratic nature and that this generates
reciprocal obligations. This initial definition already points out two important
differences between demoicracy and traditional liberal intergovernmentalism.
First, demoicracy is more than enlightened self-interest. It does not stem from
the realisation that mutual benefits may come from cooperation, and that it
therefore makes sense to cooperate (Moravcsik, 1993); it is instead grounded in
the recognition of mutual responsibilities. A demoicratic EU is not a forum
where different state actors come together to bargain, even if in a multilateral
way. It is instead the place where more stringent and binding reciprocal commit-
ments between the peoples of Europe ought to be entrenched (Nicolaı̈dis, 2013).

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 9

Although the ground upon which the demoi of Europe have these mutual obli-
gations is not always unpacked in the demoicratic literature, it is fairly clear that
it is based on the idea that, when peoples are constituted as demoi, i.e., when they
give themselves democratic institutions, then they are owed respect as collectives
by other actors. When a people is also a demos, it is owed respect – and, in
particular, its democratic decisions are. Again, although the point is hardly ever
explicitly made, it is evident from discussions that this is due to the fact that,
when a collective organises itself democratically, respecting it also means respect-
ing the individuals which form it – hence respecting it does not mean making a
choice between the freedom of collective agents and that of individuals.11 Second,
whereas demoicracy shares with intergovernmentalism the premise that the EU
should achieve the equality of certain collective agents, rather than of individual
European citizens, it has a distinct account of which collective agents are at stake.
Demoicracy advocates the equality of European peoples at the EU level, as dis-
tinct from both the equality of European citizens and the equality of member
states. The aim of the EU is not merely to foster the problem-solving capacity of
its member states, but the democratic capacity of its peoples. Therefore, the
governments of member states should not be taken at face value if they do not
suitably channel the voice of the people they represent. Thus, even if demoicrats
believe that the EU should be respectful of the sovereignty between the polities
which constitute it, this is compatible with the EU imposing demands on the
quality of domestic democratic processes. Thus, both differences highlight the
importance of the quality of domestic democracy for demoicrats.
In this spirit, EU demoi establish a union to guarantee their joint and reciprocal
freedom qua demoi, i.e., their joint capacity to be demoi in a proper sense. It is
crucial to point out at this juncture that this reciprocal commitment is cashed out
by several demoicrats (Bellamy, 2013; Nicolaı̈dis, 2013) in distinctively republican
terms: the kind of freedom which the EU demoi aim to obtain is not their recip-
rocal non-interference, but their reciprocal non-domination.12 Republicans define
freedom as the condition of not being subject to the arbitrary or uncontrolled
power of another agent – they object to what they call alien control, not to any
control or interference at all. Domination occurs when the power between two
agents is deeply unbalanced, to the effect that there are no effective constraints
on its exercise: the dominating agent can act with impunity and without being
accountable to the agent upon whom such power can be exercised (Pettit, 1993,
1997). Crucially, an agent dominates another if she is in such a position of asym-
metrical power regardless of whether she decides to exercise it or not. Thus, inter-
ference can occur without domination, and domination can occur without
interference.13 EU peoples realise that their democratic interdependence is such
that may enable some of them to dominate others in their democratic capacity.
This, for demoicrats, reflects both the history of the European region –where some
peoples have been able to subjugate others over and again – and its present set up,
where high levels of interdependence put some democratic collectives in a position
that enables them to exercise alien control over others.14 Demoicratic institutions
should enable the European demoi to regain control over the quality and health of

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

10 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

their own domestic democratic institutions. For domination to be avoided, how-

ever, some non-arbitrary interference will be necessary. Non-domination is
obtained when agents enjoy the guarantee that others cannot exercise alien control
over them – and this typically occurs when a system of binding, justified and
democratically authorised rules is in place. Thus, alien control of some demoi
over others is avoided by establishing a form of joint and equal control over the
conditions that allow their reciprocal non-domination. This resonates quite nicely
with the idea that EU demoi are a Union of people who govern together, even if not
as one. This is much more than intergovernmental multilateralism, because the
demoi genuinely govern together on those matters – but on those matters only.
In Nicolaı̈dis’s own words, demoi must enjoy ‘institutional and legal safeguards at
the centre’ (2013: 363). However, if it is the reciprocal non-domination of demoi
that must be guaranteed, the relevant system of rules and the kind of union that
will follow from it must be faithful to what the union is an union of. If the union
aims at protecting the reciprocal non-domination of the different (and inherently
diverse) European demoi, then it cannot permissibly do so by replacing them with a
European ‘superdemos’. On the contrary, it must protect their quality as different
and diverse demoi, including, crucially, their entitlement to democratic self-
determination.
If this occurs, demoicrats argue, demoicracy is a genuine third way to both
intergovernmentalism and federalism. It is a third way in institutional terms,
because demoicracy is a proper governing union (not an intergovernmental
forum), but it is inescapably different from a traditional federal union. And it is
a third way in democratic terms, because it is a form of democratic government,
but one where the democratic equality that must be achieved is that among the
different demoi, rather than individuals, of the EU. To understand this point more
precisely, it might be helpful to point out that the advocates of demoicracy under-
stand their ideal as jointly providing an answer both to the democratic deficit prob-
lem and to the question whether we should have an intergovernmental or a federal
Europe. It is an answer to the first because it tells us that, whereas the EU is highly
imperfect from the point of view of accountability, it is to the demoi of Europe,
rather than to the European demos, that it should be made accountable to. It could
well be that the EU currently fails even by this standard – indeed, several demoi-
crats think it does, although with different degrees of gravity depending on the
author.15 However, it is according to this standard that the alleged the democratic
deficit of the EU must be assessed. It is an answer to the question of the institu-
tional form of the EU because it constitutes a departure both from supranationalist
traditions that perceive the need for and expect the emergence of a European
demos and from intergovernmentalist understandings that postulate limited
powers for European Union (EU) institutions based on delegation by the national
demoi. (Cheneval et al., 2015: 2). The national demoi do not delegate, but govern,
together – however, they do so on matters that concern demoi, rather than EU
citizens directly.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 11

At this point, one might legitimately ask what it actually means for the demoi to
govern together, albeit not as one. Unsurprisingly, this is where the demoicratic
literature strikes many readers as being both less precise and less cohesive.
Institutional recommendations are both fairly sketchy and relatively diverse.
However, at closer scrutiny, some important elements can be identified. First, it
is argued (particularly by Bellamy, 2013; Bellamy and Weale, 2015) that the key
institutions of EU demoicracy should be neither the Commission, nor the Council,
nor the European Parliament, but rather domestic parliaments. Demoicrats think
that this is not a paradox. If the EU is not a federation, it is not the Commission or
the European Parliament that ought to be strengthened in order to tackle the
democratic deficit. However, if it is not an intergovernmental forum either, we
cannot take governments at face value (as we tend to do with the Council); we
must look, instead, at what happens inside the member states of the EU.
Demoicracy is democracy among demoi, not states taken at face value – and as
such, it is a precondition for it that the demoi of each member state, via their
legislatures, actually participate in EU law and policy making.16 Domestic parlia-
ments should be in the business on scrutinising, deliberating on, and wherever
possible even initiating EU legislation. They should be actors proper of EU
policy and law-making. This also clarifies why the standards of accountability
for a demoicracy are higher than those of an international organisation: the EU
is accountable to its demoi, not to its member states. It is not enough that states be
represented equally in the EU; we additionally need instruments to ensure that it is
the actually different demoi that are thereby represented. As Bellamy and Weale
(2015) put it, ‘when governments make commitments to one another about their
future behaviour, they simultaneously need to be responsible and accountable to
their domestic populations in order to retain their political legitimacy’ (2015: 259).
On the one hand, this makes individual states highly responsible for their own fate
in a demoicracy, for they each must ensure that their own demos take an active role
in this respect by being involved in EU policy and law-making.17 On the other
hand, however, this is not enough. First, the Union is also to be held accountable if
and when it creates obstacles to this dynamic – as it does, for instance, if and when
it is impatient towards careful and lengthy scrutiny of EU politics by different
domestic publics. Second, each state has an obligation to acknowledge that other
states also have obligations to ensure domestic deliberation. Governments must
acknowledge that being fair to each other means allowing each of them to undergo
high-quality internal democratic processes at each stage of the relevant EU-level
decision making (Bellamy and Weale, 2015: 260). Thus, the strengthening of the
role of domestic parliaments in EU affairs in the name of demoicracy imposes
responsibilities on the demoi with regard to themselves, on the institutions of the
EU, and on the demoi with regard to other demoi.
More detail on which principles ought to govern the institutional shape of a
demoicracy is offered by Cheneval and Schimmelfennig (2013), who argue that
demoicracy requires indeed supranational institutions, but such that guarantee

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

12 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

the freedom and equality of all its peoples (not merely states). If we were to draw
on a domestic analogy – and therefore consider demoi in a supranational settings to
be relevantly like individuals in a national setting – we might conclude at this point
that the freedom and equality of demoi is in principle compatible with a federal
union. Only die-hard anarchists believe that citizens are unfree simply because they
are subject to a sovereign legal and political order from whose authority they
cannot escape. The consensus is that they are not unfree provided that the
sovereign order in question has certain features – i.e., that it respects their
fundamental rights and is under their democratic control. Why should this
not be true for peoples, as well? This line of argument, however, seems to
disregard the fundamental difference between citizens and demoi, and therefore
to betray the very ideal of demoicracy. The freedom of an individual citizen
must mirror her nature as an individual person, and this (anarchists excluded) is
widely considered to be compatible with the presence of a coercive and non-
optional political order, provided that it has certain features. Actually, most
republicans would point out, in a Kantian spirit, that it requires such an
order, for only political authority can establish the kind of regulatory frame-
work and legal certainty that are necessary to avoid domination among indi-
viduals (Kant, 1999[1797]). At the level of demoi, one might argue that things
are different. The default understanding of sovereignty – again in a Kantian
spirit – is that a legitimate state may not be subject to coercion, because it is
itself the authoritative source of coercive rules (Kant, 1999[1797]). In a democ-
racy, a state is legitimate when it is democratic. This means that the demoi are
the source of ultimate sovereign power. Respecting the freedom of a demos,
therefore, means respecting the sovereign rule it establishes. This means that, for
a supranational institution to be a demoicracy, it must respect all the demoi
which constitute it qua ultimate sources of ‘pouvoir constituant’, i.e., the power
to constitute a political order and to give themselves a constitution (Cheneval
and Schimmelfennig, 2013: 342). If democratic peoples are not recognised as
ultimate sources of pouvoir constituant by a supranational political order, they
are disrespected qua peoples The supranational institutions of the EU therefore
do not have pouvoir constituant in and of themselves, but rely on that of its
member peoples. Therefore, a demoicracy can have supranational institutions
(which do way more than facilitate multilateral negotiations), but only such
whose basic conditions are ultimately under the control of the different
demoi. Crucially, the demoi must have ultimate control on entry, exit, and
some other basic rules: no demos may be obliged to join or stay in a demoi-
cratic order by the decision of a branch of government only, by majority deci-
sion of a group of states, by majority decision with the participation of citizens
that are not members of the democratic state in question. (Cheneval and
Schimmelfennig, 2013: 342). Note how this resonates with Bellamy and
Weale’s argument: it is the ultimate source of sovereign power within a demo-
cratic state, i.e., its legislature or parliament, which retains authority over
demoicratic matters. Thus, we can conclude that neither intergovernmentalism
nor federalism respect demoi qua demoi: the former unacceptably takes

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 13

governments at face value, whilst the latter disrespects demoi qua sources of
pouvoir constituant.
Finally, it is worth noting that, whereas I think this to be the most plausible
reconstruction of the demoicratic ideal, some advocates of demoicracy think that it
is a mistake to put too much emphasis on specific questions of institutional design.
Nicolaı̈dis, for instance, suggests that demoicracy is an attempt to be faithful to the
ideal of non-domination between the peoples of Europe rather than a specific
institutional crystallisation. The same EU, with the same institutions, has been
more or less capable of measuring up to the demoicratic ideal at different historical
junctures. Demoicracy is an expression of mutual solidarity between the peoples of
Europe who, however, simultaneously also acknowledge their inescapable differ-
ences as well as their potential to constitute a threat to one another. It is this
solidarity cum difference that defines demoicracy from intergovernmentalism and
federalism. As such, demoicracy is ‘normatively antithetic to both’ institutional
forms even if it may ‘empirically borrow’ from either or both at a given time
(Nicolaı̈dis, 2013: 353; emphasis in the original).18

Can demoicracy be a third way?

The last section has put forward an interpretation of the demoicratic ideal. In light
of this, is demoicracy, so construed, a genuine third way? In tackling this question,
I shall grant a series of points to the demoicratic camp. I shall grant that normative
and institutional ideals for the EU should be formulated in a normative-inductive
or practice-dependent manner. I shall grant that different demoi can value their
own independence and yet recognise that they produce democratic externalities,
and that this can only be addressed by establishing a form of joint governing of
sorts. Finally, I shall grant that the republican ideal of non-domination is the best
way to cash out this aim. Admittedly, I find this easy to do as I agree with demoi-
crats on all of these points; however, my aim here is to isolate one conceptual
question, namely whether demoicracy constitutes a distinctive ideal. This section
argues that demoicracy does have distinctive normative features – but that, when it
comes to pinning down how it should be institutionally realised, a choice between
(rich) intergovernmentalism and (thin) federalism must be made.
The first building block of the argument is the following: demoicracy is, first and
foremost, an answer to the democratic deficit problem, not to the issue of the
institutional form of the EU – and the two, unlike what most participants in the
debate assume, are not one and the same thing. The democratic deficit thesis argues
that the institutions of the EU are not democratically legitimate – or not to a
sufficient degree. Whereas the thesis is most vocally advocated by federalists in
order to push for a strengthening of the European parliament and the transform-
ation of the EU into a federal democracy, the issue is, as we have seen, more
complex. A better system of democratic accountability within the EU can be
achieved by creating forms of direct EU-level accountability to European citizens,
where the latter are conceived of as members of a single European people (and
demos). However, it can also be tackled by making sure that each and every

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

14 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

existing national democratic public (and not just their governments) has the last
word on every important piece of EU law-making – in other words, the aim can
also be reached through less, rather than more, integration. Conversely, advocating
federal integration need not entail advocating EU democratisation. Just to take the
most obvious example, the European Commission and the European Parliament
fare equally well from the point of view of their federal or supranational pedigree,
but very differently by democratic standards.
The demoicratic ideal is an attempt to show that the current framing of the
debate on democratic deficit is misguided, because it presupposes that democratic
legitimation can only occur through the legitimation of binding norms by one
single demos. Therefore, one should either create one such demos at the EU level
or stick to a Europe of national democracies. Tertium not datur, because democracy
requires a demos. The ideal of demoicracy, instead, tells us that it is possible for a
plurality of demoi to govern together democratically over their reciprocal relation-
ships, rights, and obligations. In other words, demoicracy gives us an alternative
story about which agents ought to be in mutual relationships of freedom and
democratic equality within the EU – demoi, not individual citizens. This means
that it is possible to have a democracy without a single demos, namely a democracy
regulating the joint democratic government of inescapably different yet also
inescapably interdependent demoi. This is what demoi-cracy means: a democracy
where the demos is a demos of demoi, not individual citizens. Yet, the idea that
the demos is constituted by separate demoi is to be taken seriously: thus, demoi-
cracy will necessarily be a form of democratic government which respects the
right of each demos to its own internal process of democratic self-determination.
To sum up:

1. Demoicrats care about the freedom and equality of the different demoi (not
citizens) of Europe,
2. which should be cashed out in terms of republican non-domination, and
3. the main threat to which is constituted by their democratic interdependence
(which leads to problematic democratic externalities),
4. and which can therefore only be restored through a form of proper joint gov-
ernment on these matters.

1 to 4 give us indeed a distinctive normative ideal of obligations beyond borders,

and a distinctive ideal of democratic equality in particular. With respect to the
former, it claims that the European peoples (not member states, not European
citizens) have mutual obligations which arise from their capacity to dominate
each other, and which they must honour by entrenching protection against such
capacity. This is how the peoples of Europe express mutual solidarity whilst recog-
nising their inescapable difference.19 With respect to the latter, if 1 to 4 hold,
democratic legitimation can occur at the EU level, but it can occur without con-
stituting a single demos. It can occur by instituting the join democratic government
of demoi on the matters which concern their joint and reciprocal non-domination
qua demoi.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 15

Demoicracy, thus characterised, has indeed distinctive normative features which

contribute to an ideal of democracy and solidarity among the (democratically
organised) peoples of Europe. It does not, however, constitutive a wholly distinct-
ive ideal through and through because its most suitable institutional incarnation
remains a largely open question – one which raises, in particular, issues concerning
what it means for different demoi to be in reciprocal relations of non-domination.
Depending on how we settle the question of what non-domination means, I sug-
gest, the institutionalisation of demoicracy is either drawn towards very moralised
and rich conceptions of intergovernmentalism, or towards meaningfully limited
and thin forms of federalism – but not towards a third and fully distinct
institutional construct. Thus, not only is demoicracy open to different institutional
incarnations; what is more, these incarnations are variations of either intergovern-
mentalism or federalism, rather a genuine third alternative in institutional terms.
To understand this point, a brief reflection on what the non-domination of
demoi might mean is necessary. Republican non-domination is typically conceived
of as being best protected when both democratic control and institutionally sanc-
tioned guarantees (for instance, in the forms of the rule of law and/or constitutional
rights) are in place. The former ensures that the people exercise control over the
kind of interference that is exercised over them (recall that non-domination is
not the absence of interference), whereas the latter ensure that certain forms
of interference that are incompatible with any understanding of non-domination,
or certain forms of protection that are necessary for any understanding of non-
domination, be in place at all times (say, freedom of expression or the right to
strike). However, depending on the relevant brand of republicanism, different
emphasis will be put on either side. Under a certain understanding of republican-
ism, democracy is the central value: no ‘guarantee’ can be such sub specie aeterni-
tatis – only the people can determine whether this is the case or not (Bellamy,
2007). Solid forms of legal and constitutional protections which aim at determining
what non-domination requires substantively are valid safeguards against
non-domination only if they enjoy democratic legitimation and can be democrat-
ically revoked. Anything else, especially in the face of inescapable disagreement on
these matters, means creating a de facto unaccountable class of ‘experts’ – be they
policy makers, judges, or both. Thus, whereas a liberal society (i.e., one which
subscribes to liberal rights) without democracy is in principle possible, republican-
ism can only occur if the conditions that set the terms of the joint and reciprocal
non-domination of all are always under the control on whom they apply. This
brand of republicanism delivers distinctive policy recommendations at the domestic
level (such as the rejection of strong constitutional review and of constitutions
which cannot be democratically revoked in a meaningful way) but is also more
inclined to have a specific understanding of what non-domination between demoi
might mean. Democracy plays the lion’s share in protecting against domination
both at the inter-individual/domestic level and at the inter-demoi/international one.
Under this democratically demanding reading of republicanism, a demoi is
non-dominated when it can decide for itself, period. The demoicratic story is still
true, in that European demoi might acknowledge that they affect each other’s

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

16 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

democratic nature in problematic ways, and should recognise that they have an
obligation to cooperate with the explicit purpose of avoiding that. However, the
norms which this cooperation establishes have a republican pedigree if and only if
the ultimate authorisation comes from each of the demoi on an ongoing basis. This
brand of republicanism, in other words, puts forward a specific account of what is
special about a democracy among different demoi. If such democracy is to respect
the nature of its ‘citizens’ qua demoi, it must respect that they and only they are the
ultimate source of ‘pouvoir constituant’. This means that the EU-level ‘demos of
demoi’ cannot have supremacy over the single demoi. The point is to create an
association which guards against ‘the domination of one people by another by
preserving the capacity of the associated peoples for representative democracy’
(Bellamy, 2007: 499). This is a form of intergovernmentalism through and through.
Bellamy (2013) and Bellamy and Weale (2015) unapologetically recognise that:
demoicracy is thus equated to a form of republican intergovernmentalism.
Republican intergovernmentalism ‘promotes [. . .] the possibility for all individuals
to live in representative states that possess democratic systems where collective
decisions are made in ways that show them equal respect and concern through
being under their public, equal control’ (Bellamy, 2013: 507). In other terms, repub-
lican intergovernmentalism is a particularly robust, and indeed moralised, form of
practicing the intergovernmental game. It recommends that people associate to
achieve certain moral goals and obligations, rather than win-win situations of
mutual benefit. Under this understanding, demoicracy clearly is not an institutional
third way – it is rather an exhortation to practice intergovernmentalism in a par-
ticular way.
The brand of republicanism which is usually identified as neo-roman, instead,
puts a much stronger emphasis on the rule of law and on robust guarantees which
are resilient to what (arguably volatile) majorities might want at a given time.
Philip Pettit has developed a version of this brand of republicanism where democ-
racy arguably plays a fairly modest – merely ‘editorial’, rather than ‘authorial’ –
role (2004, 2013). In editorial politics, the emphasis is on the capacity of citizens to
contest, but not necessarily make, the law. Authorial politics is the more creative
realm of political activity – but is also the one where populism and irrational
political instincts (including tyranny of the majority dynamics) prevail. Editorial
politics, instead, is the realm of critical contestation of specific policies and laws –
it is more reactive, but also more reflective. One does not need to go this far – and
might be way more sympathetic to authorial democracy than Pettit – to point out
that the more radically democratic variant of republicanism might be too cavalier
with respect to legal and possibly constitutional guarantees. Domination occurs
where I have no control over the rules that apply to me, but it also occurs when
the democratic quality of my polity is generally high, and yet genuine democratic
majorities take decisions that allow forms of what might be reasonably called
‘arbitrary’ interference. In other words, a strong concern for the risk of a ‘tyranny
of the majority’ is and should remain a central republican concern. If my right to
practice my religion is constantly threatened by democratic majorities, I am exposed
to domination. And the same is true if it is simply exposed to democratic volatility.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 17

Thus, for neo-roman republicanism, the rule of law and some constitutional guar-
antees are central indeed (even if not necessarily with the same disregard for author-
ial politics which Pettit exhibits). Republican freedom requires democracy and
robust unconditional guarantees of certain fundamental rights: both are necessary
to ‘be one’s own master’. This has important and fairly self-explanatory implications
at the domestic level, but it also have some equally central and not so obvious ones
when it comes to non-domination among demoi. If demoi retain strong opt-out
clauses on all important matters, there is a sense in which upholding conditions
for the non-domination of the different demoi is up to the good will of all and
each of them. This, however, might be seen as somewhat of a contradiction in
terms. It is true that the non-domination of a demos must exhibit some form of
respect for it being an independent polity, and that this is what we ultimately want to
protect. However, we want to protect it because demoi can dominate each other.
And if each demos is potentially capable of dominating others –and by definition
it is, for this is what triggers the demand for a demoicracy to begin with – then the
demoi should entrench some constraints on their capacity to do so. This cannot be up
to their own good will: as we have seen, domination is matter of power, not intention,
and non-domination consists in depriving certain actors of their capacity to exercise
arbitrary power or alien control, not in them being benevolently inclined towards not
using their power whilst still retaining it. If the demoi of Europe recognise that their
capacity for reciprocal domination and for the production of mutual democratic
externalities is a reality, and if they acknowledge that they have an obligation to
address this, then addressing it means binding each other in meaningful ways.
Obviously, these binding rules should not be something which an unaccountable
EU bureaucracy decides and administers at will; they should, instead, be the product
of a joint democratic government of the peoples of Europe, who decides on those
rules without merging into a single demos. But such rules should be binding. This is
what ‘institutional and legal safeguards at the centre’ (Nicolaı̈dis, 2013: 363) means.
Nicolaı̈dis seems to acknowledge this point when she argues that ‘Germans and
Greeks should not only have the right to put the problems they create for
each other’s democratic health on each other’s political agenda, but should entrench
institutional mechanism to address them’ (2013: 356; emphasis added). This,
however, does require some form of federal union, even if one whose only area of
competence is that of ensuring the necessary pre-conditions for the joint and mutual
non-domination of EU demoi. A demand for entrenchment is a demand for the
relevant demoi to bind themselves to a superior authority – even if that superior
authority will only have very limited scope, and even if the whole point of this
authority will be to guarantee the democratic health, diversity, and freedom of all
demoi. It is a very thin form of federalism – but it is federalism nonetheless. It is
worth noting that this form of binding is deeply in tension with some of Nicolaı̈dis’s
other claims – and in particular, with her suggestion that, regardless of the specific
institutions in place, the EU can fare better or worse in demoicratic terms depending
on what it chooses to do with at some critical junctures. This suggestion that
EU institutions are what its members make of them seems to involve a level of
discretion that is incompatible with non-domination understood in these terms.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

18 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

Non-dominating each other, under this reading, seems again to be a matter of

good will.
I therefore conclude that demoicracy is a distinctive and arguably appealing
normative ideal – but that, institutionally speaking, demoicrats must still choose
between intergovernmental and institutional variants. The specific understanding
of republican non-domination that one endorses has implications for the kind of
institutional structure that the demoicratic ideal should take. The radically demo-
cratic understanding of republicanism must be committed to the view that, for
demoicracy to be distinctive, it must consider demoi to be the ultimate sources
of sovereign authority – and this means that only form of joint governing between
independent demoi can be intergovernmental in kind. For those who believe,
instead, the non-domination requires robust guarantees, the demoicratic level of
governance must be able to enforce at least the most fundamental terms of mutual
non-domination on the member demoi. Under this understanding, demoicracy is
still different from democracy in a single demos, but this difference is largely
(although not exclusively) quantitative: it must respect that it is democracy over
independent demoi, and therefore it must be suitably thin. Within those narrow
boundaries, however, it will enjoy the supremacy of a federal union. However, this
choice also means that, at closer scrutiny, the bifurcation between intergovern-
mentalism and federalism is inescapable after all.
Before I conclude this section, I would like to address one possible demoicratic
rejoinder. Arguably, the variant of demoicracy put forward by Cheneval and
Schimmelfennig (2013) is the closest to an institutional ideal that is neither recog-
nisably intergovernmental nor recognisably federal. In their view, demoicracy has
supranational institutions proper, but the demoi retain ultimate control on entry,
exit, and some other basic rules. Supranational institutions do govern as long as the
demoi stay in the Union, but demoi retain, for instance, a right to leave the Union
at any point. Whereas it is true that this variant constitutes the strongest challenge
to my claim, I think that it ultimately fails. If (and it is a big if) the right to exit is
sufficiently strong and robust, I fail to see how this does not collapse into inter-
governmentalism, although a particularly thick one – one according to which, as
long as one stay in the association, one accepts a thick web of supranational rules,
although the possibility to no longer accept them remains meaningful at any time.
The ongoing justification for supranational institutions is intergovernmental – each
and every demoi has the last word on their participation in them. This is incom-
patible with the second understanding of non-domination I have described. It is
not compatible with the first, but the first brand also explicitly subscribes to
demoicracy qua republican intergovernmentalism. Again, one might object that
claiming that demoi can bind themselves in a way that allows for no return is a
self-contradiction, for a demos who does that ceases to be a demos qua source of
‘pouvoir constituant’. I would argue, however, that this is an objection to the very
idea that the second understanding of non-domination is applicable to demoi, not
to my claim that demoicracy must decide between intergovernmentalism and fed-
eralism. If the objection were correct, republican intergovernmentalism would
be the way to go, for the only form of non-domination which can possibly apply

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 19

to demoi would be the radically democratic one. If that were the case, my claim
that demoicracy is not a distinctive institutional ideal would still stand. I also think,
however, that there is hope for thin demoicratic federalists to address that objec-
tion. Doing it lies fully beyond the scope of this paper, but it is clear that the
objection is based on a very specific understanding of sovereignty –namely, as an
all or nothing deal, as something which you either have or do not have. The pos-
sibility to divide different sovereign competences is, however, the subject of many
complex and long-standing debates in law, political science, international relations,
and philosophy. The jury is clearly still out on whether it is possible to relinquish
some sovereignty without relinquishing it all. If it is possible, then it is possible for
the demoi of Europe, as well. And whereas demoicracy, under this reading, would
ground an importantly thin form of federalism – a very different one from the
model which traditional European federalists advocate – it would still be a recog-
nisably federalist union.
The point of this paper is therefore vindicated: whereas demoicracy has distinctive
normative features, it does not constitutive a wholly distinctive institutional form:
the demoicratic ideal must be translated either into a specifically moralised way of
practicing the intergovernmental way or into a particularly thin federal union.

Conclusion
The previous section has argued that demoicrats must choose between intergovern-
mentalism and federalism – even if between particularly rich and moralised ver-
sions of the former or particularly thin versions of the latter. I would like to end
this paper by making two partial concessions. I have argued that, if the necessary
conditions for the joint and reciprocal non-domination of EU demoi must be
robustly guaranteed through ‘safeguards at the centre’ (and we have seen that it
is a big if even within the republican camp), there must be a sense in which the EU
is the ultimate source of authority over those conditions – and therefore a sense in
which it must be a federal union of sorts, if a very thin one. Some of its rulings must
be binding and ultimate, and claiming that demoi must retain a strong right to exit
at all times is in stark tension with this requirement. If (and again it is a big if) non-
domination is understood in this way, when a demos acknowledges that it might
dominate other demoi and enters the EU as a result, it binds itself in a way that is
incompatible with a strong right of exit.20 Hence, the demoi relinquish full control
over the conditions of their cooperation.
However, if the point of the EU is the equal respect of all demoi, two important
qualifications must be made. First, it does indeed remain an open question whether
the conditions that guarantee the joint non-domination of all demoi must be
decided upon by consensus or by majority decision making – and, if the latter,
majority among whom? As far as this paper is concerned, the possibility that unan-
imity must be required on certain or even many issues remains entirely an option –
and if it turns out to be the right option, the EU will differ from other federal
unions in a very crucial matter of decision making, and not just in terms of its
thinness. What I have argued is that, if non-domination is interpreted in this

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

20 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

specific way, a commitment to a Union of peoples does have an element of no

return and unconditionality to it; but this leaves open the question of how the
union should work if it is to be a union of demoi, rather than individuals. It could
be that a federal demoicracy requires consensus on a much higher number of
crucial matters than a traditional federal union. Settling this issue lies entirely
beyond the scope of this paper, but it is clear that the combination of no (easy)
right to exit and consensual decision making on many issues would be rather
unusual.21 If that were to be the right way to interpret and institutionalise demoi-
cracy, there would be a thin sense in which demoicracy is a third way.
Secondly, if a demos is a source of pouvoir constituant, it is quite plausible that
the acknowledgment of a duty to form a union of non-dominating demoi may only
permissibly come from each demos itself. Hence, the acknowledgment is an acknow-
ledgment of a duty of no return, but no demos can be forced to acknowledge this
duty and enter the Union. Hence, even if we think that a EU demoicracy should be
a federal union of sorts, the process of its formation must be more like that of
Switzerland than like that of the USA.22 Saying that the recognition of a duty to
establish joint non-domination is a duty to form a federal union (with an element
of no return) does not necessarily mean that demoi can be forced into it.
These two concessions (and the first in particular) do point to two senses in
which demoicracy might be different from more familiar federal unions. However,
leaving those aside, the argument of the paper still stands: demoicracy is a distinct-
ive ideal of democratic equality and solidarity beyond borders, but it does not
constitute an alternative between intergovernmentalism and federalism in institu-
tional terms. This might well be what Nicolaı̈dis means when she claims that
demoicracy is a model of inter-demoi solidarity rather than a specific institutional
crystallisation. However, from a practice-dependent perspective, it is not entirely
consistent to put forward a normative ideal without clarifying at least its most
fundamental institutional implications (such as whether member states of a demoi-
cracy will enjoy absolute sovereignty or not). If we do not know what such an ideal
commits us to, it is not clear that we can fully grasp what it is, and whether we
should subscribe to it or not (Banai et al., 2011: 54–55).23 Therefore, granting that
demoicracy is only a distinctive normative ideal cannot leave demoicrats entirely
satisfied.
Using Nicolaı̈dis’s metaphor, navigating the Rubicon is not an option: we can
either stretch our arms as much as possible towards the other bank, whilst sill
avoiding jumping into the water; or we can perform a very minimal crossing,
which involves simply reaching the other bank and staying put rather than ventur-
ing into the valleys in front of us. But choose between one of the two banks we
must.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to audiences at the University of Belgrade, Technical University of Darmstadt,
University of Bristol, and University College London for very helpful feedback, with special
thanks to Richard Bellamy, Francis Cheneval, Rob Jubb, Cécile Laborde, Juri Viehoff,
Albert Weale, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 21

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.

Notes
1. See, in particular Nicolaı̈dis (2003, 2004, 2012, 2013), Cheneval and Schimmelfennig
(2013), Cheneval et al. (2015), Bellamy (2013), Bellamy and Weale (2015), and Lacey
(2015). Bohman (2005) and Besson (2006) also use the term demoicracy to refer both to
the EU and to forms of global democratisation; however, they take the term to identify a
different institutional model, namely a decentralised and deterritorialised version of
democracy (one where, for instance, the contours of the demos may vary depending
on the decision at stake).
2. I here refer to demoicracy as an alternative to the two EU models because this is where
the fleshing out of the demoicratic ideal (especially in institutional terms) has gone into
most detail (in particular in Cheneval and Schimmelfennig, 2013) – and also because the
avoidance of inter-demoi domination, which the ideal wants to realise, is arguably a
particularly pressing issue at the EU level. I therefore follow the lead of the current
shape of the debate. However, most of what I have to say about EU demoicracy applies,
mutatis mutandis, to the global realm, as well.
3. In cashing out the different complaints, I shall here largely follow Follesdal and Hix
(2006).
4. For some, of course, this concern both for individual citizens and peoples is what makes
the EU distinctively valuable, albeit this twofold ideal might be imperfectly embodied in
its institutions (Cheneval, 2011; Habermas, 2015; Scherz and Welger, 2015).
5. This argument was, of course, already being powerfully made about the European
Community (EC) before the establishment of the EU (Moravcsik, 1993, 1994).
6. See, for example, Bellamy (2013) or Sangiovanni (2013).
7. Nicolaı̈dis (2013) in particular, puts particular emphasis in the mutual commitment of the
peoples of Europe to overcome their historical tendencies to try and dominate each other.
8. While I am also independently sympathetic to the practice-dependent approach (Banai
et al., 2011; Ronzoni, 2009, 2012), this is not relevant for the argument I make here.
9. Another unclear point in the literature is whether the terms ‘demoicracy’ and ‘multilat-
eral democracy’ should be taken as synonymous (see, for instance, Cheneval, 2011;
Scherz and Welge, 2015).
10. Some forms of international tax competition might constitute an example of this
dynamic. In circumstances of high economic interdependence and capital mobility, if
a number of demoi decide to pursue policies of low corporate and income tax with the
aim of attracting both corporations and extremely wealthy individuals, it might become
virtually impossible for other demoi not to do the same even if this is not what their
citizens want. Alternatively, they might be forced to agree to multilateral strategies of
tax harmonisation with other constituencies, which might constitute a way to stop crude
races to the bottom but which nevertheless severely limit the capacity of national demoi
to take discretionary and flexible decisions on a number of fiscal matters. Both the

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

22 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

empirical contours of the issue and the proposed solutions are highly controversial – I
simply mention the policy case here for pure exemplary purposes (for an in depth
treatment, see Dietsch, 2011; Genschel, 2002; Rixen, 2011; Ronzoni, 2014).
11. It is fairly clear that this point has some initial intuitive appeal, but it is equally clear that
it is open to important objections – it is not self-evident that individuals within a dem-
ocracy are respected by the democratic process. However, addressing this issue would
take us too far from the topic of the paper, which is not primarily concerned with
vindicating the demoicratic ideal.
12. Cheneval and Schimmelfennig (2013) and Cheneval et al. (2015) adopt a more markedly
Rawlsian perspective, but their focus on the key role of the ‘pouvoir constituant’ of the
people – which I illustrate later in this section – makes the approach congenial with a
republican perspective of non-domination as self-government.
13. The classical republican example to explain this phenomenon is the relationship between
a mistress and her slave. The mistress need not interfere with the slave at any given time
to get him to do what she wants – the knowledge that she can exercise arbitrary control
over him whenever she wants is enough. A relevantly similar example in international
politics is constituted by a powerful corporation which can get a state with weak regu-
latory capacity to adapt its policies to the corporation’s interests simply via the threat to
relocate somewhere else – or indeed, simply because the government of said state knows
that that threat is possible (Buckinx, 2010).
14. Of course, it is very important to point out that, if EU integration occurs in the wrong
way, EU institutions may amplify, rather than constrain, the capacity of some demoi to
dominate others – the increasing talk of renewed German hegemony and the debate
around the Greek bail-outs are but the most prominent example in this respect (on this
point, see also Laborde and Ronzoni, 2016).
15. Cf. Cheneval and Schimmelfennig (2013), Nicolaı̈dis (2013), and also Bellamy and
Weale (2015) on the European Monetary Union in particular.
16. This resonates with John Rawls’s justification for speaking of peoples, and not states, in
The Law of Peoples (1999) – it is also worth reminding that Cheneval and
Schimmelfennig (2013) put forward a model of demoicracy that is clearly inspired to
the Rawlsian paradigm.
17. This is also stressed by Cheneval and Schimmelfennig (2013).
18. Lacey (2015) also attempts to offer an institutional characterisation of demoicracy as a
complex interplay between a weak EU demos and the different, thicker national demoi.
19. This is compatible with EU demoicracy also displaying a ‘weak’ Pan-European demos
(Lacey, 2015) and entrenching some limited rights and obligations which affect European
citizens directly (such as the very concept of European citizenship and the four freedom of
goods, capital, services, and peoples as entrenched in the Lisbon Treaty).
20. Of course, making this point is fully compatible with the claim that, even in sovereign
polities, there should be a fairly permissive right of secession, and legal channels to
initiate processes of secession. However, a right to secession, however defined, would
plausibly be different from a right of exit – both in substantive and in procedural terms.
For obvious reasons of space, the issue cannot be addressed here. What should be noted,
however, is that this would be in deep contradiction with the current constitutional set
up of the EU, which – through the Lisbon Treaty – assigns a strong and explicit right of
exit to member states.
21. Interestingly, this institutional mix would have very specific implications for the incom-
ing Brexit referendum. On the one hand, one such referendum would simply not be
possible. On the other hand, however, if (and it is yet another big if) the set of issues

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 23

which motivate the UK demos to question its membership were judged to be part of
those on which unanimous consensus is called for, the UK would be justified, not in
holding a referendum, but in calling for phase of EU-wide constitutional crisis and
renegotiation – which is precisely what the UK-EU negotiations preceding the declar-
ation of the referendum date tried to avoid.
22. I am here only referring to the process – it is obvious that a EU demoicracy will be an
enormously thinner federal union than both.
23. I am grateful to Rob Jubb for reminding me of this point.

References
Banai A, Ronzoni M and Schemmel C (2011) Global social justice: The possibility of social
justice beyond states in a world of overlapping practices. In: Banai A, Ronzoni M and
Schemmel C (eds) Social Justice, Global Dynamics – Theoretical and Empirical
Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp.46–60.
Bellamy R (2007) Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality
of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bellamy R (2013) An ever closer union among the peoples of Europe: Republican inter-
governmentalism and demoicratic representation within the EU. Journal of European
Integration 35(5): 499–516.
Bellamy R and Kröger S (2013) Representation deficits and surpluses in EU policy-making.
Journal of European Integration 35(5): 477–497.
Bellamy R and Weale A (2015) Political legitimacy and European monetary union:
Contracts, constitutionalism and the normative logic of two-level games. Journal of
European Public Policy 22(2): 257–274.
Besson S (2006) Deliberative demoi-cracy in the European Union: Towards a deterritoria-
lization of democracy. In: Besson S and Martı̀ JL (eds) Deliberative Democracy and Its
Discontents. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp.181–214.
Bohman J (2005) From demos to demoi: Democracy across borders. Ratio Juris 18(3):
293–314.
Buckinx B (2010) Domination in global politics: Reflections on freedom and an argument for
incremental global change. In: Cabrera L (ed.) Global Governance/Global Government:
Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp.253–282.
Cheneval F (2011) The Government of the Peoples: On the Idea and Principles of Multilateral
Democracy. London: Palgrave.
Cheneval F and Schimmelfennig F (2013) The case for demoicracy in the European Union.
Journal of Common Market Studies 51(2): 334–350.
Cheneval F, Lavenex S and Schimmelfennig F (2015) Demoicracy in the European Union:
Principles, institutions, policies. Journal of European Public Policy 22(1): 1–18.
Dietsch P (2011) Rethinking sovereignty in international fiscal policy. Review of
International Studies 37(5): 2107–2120.
Follesdal A and Hix S (2006) Why there is a democratic deficit in the EU: A response to
Majone and Moravcsik. Journal of Common Market Studies 44(3): 533–562.
Genschel P (2002) Globalization, tax competition, and the welfare state. Politics & Society
30(2): 245–275.
Habermas J (2015) Democracy in Europe: Why the development of the EU into a trans-
national democracy is necessary and how it is possible. European Law Journal 21(4):
546–557.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

24 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

Kant I (1999[1797]) The Metaphysical Elements of Justice: Part I of the Metaphysics of

Morals, Ladd J (trans). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Laborde C and Ronzoni M (2016) What is a free state? Republican internationalism and
globalisation. Political Studies 64(2): 279–296.
Lacey J (2015) Conceptually mapping the European Union: A demoi-cratic analysis. Journal
of European Integration 38(1): 61–77.
Moravcsik A (1993) Preferences and power in the European Community: A liberal inter-
govermentalist approach. Journal of Common Market Studies 31(4): 473–524.
Moravcsik A (1994) Why the European Community strengthens the state: International
cooperation and domestic politics. Center for European Studies Working Paper Series,
no. 52.
Moravcsik A (2002) In defence of the ‘‘democratic deficit’’: Reassessing the legitimacy of the
European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies 40(4): 603–634.
Morgan G (2007) The Idea of a European Superstate: Public Justification and European
Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nicolaı̈dis K (2003) Our European demoi-cracy: Is this constitution a third way for Europe?
In: Nicolaı̈dis K and Weatherill S (eds) Whose Europe? National Models and the
Constitution of the European Union Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.137–152.
Nicolaı̈dis K (2004) The new constitution as European ‘‘demoi-cracy’’? Critical Review of
International Social and Political Philosophy 7(1): 76–93.
Nicolaı̈dis K (2012) The idea of European demoicracy. In: Dickson J and Eleftheriadis P
(eds) Philosophical Foundations of EU Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
pp.247–274.
Nicolaı̈dis K (2013) European demoicracy and its crisis. Journal of Common Market Studies
51(2): 351–369.
Nugent N (2006) The Government and Politics of the European Union. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Pettit P (1993) Negative liberty, liberal and republican. European Journal of Philosophy 1(1):
15–38.
Pettit P (1997) Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Pettit P (2004) Depoliticizing democracy. Ratio Juris 17(1): 52–65.
Pettit P (2013) On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls J (1999) The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rixen T (2011) Tax competition and inequality: The case for global tax governance. Global
Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions 17(4): 447–467.
Ronzoni M (2009) The global order: A case of background injustice? A practice-dependent
account. Philosophy and Public Affairs 37(3): 229–256.
Ronzoni M (2012) Life is not a camping trip – Or, on the desirability of Cohenite socialism.
Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 11(2): 171–185.
Ronzoni M (2014) Global tax governance: The bullets internationalists must bite and those
they must not. Moral Philosophy and Politics 1(1): 37–60.
Sangiovanni A (2008) Justice and the priority of politics to morality. Journal of Political
Philosophy 16(2): 137–164.
Sangiovanni A (2013) Solidarity in the European Union. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
33(2): 213–241.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016

Ronzoni 25

Scharpf F (1999) Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Scherz A and Welger R (2015) Union citizenship revisited: Multilateral democracy as nor-
mative standard for European Citizenship. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33(8):
1254–1275.
Streeck W (2014) Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. New York/
London: Verso.

Downloaded from ept.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 14, 2016