Challenging Executive Dominance inEuropean Democracy

Abstract

Executive dominance in the contemporaryEUis part of a wider migration of executive power towards types of decision making that eschew electoral accountability and popular democratic control. This democratic gap is fed by far‐going secrecy arrangements and practices exercised in a concerted fashion by the various executive actors at different levels of governance and resulting in the blacking out of crucial information and documents – even for parliaments. Beyond a deconstruction exercise on the nature and location ofEUexecutive power and secretive working practices, this article focuses on the challenges facing parliaments in particular. It seeks to reconstruct a more pro‐active and networked role of parliaments – both national andEuropean – as countervailing power. In this vision parliaments must assert themselves in a manner that is true to their role in the political system and that is not dictated by government at any level.