European Supranationalism and the Global System

Abstract

The European Union’s one directly, democratically elected and accountable political institution is relatively under-developed. The European Parliament has not accumulated anything like the degree of decision-making responsibility or competence which balances out that degree which has been relinquished by the equivalent institutions (the parliaments) at the nation-state level, leaving aside the degree relinquished by the full range of political institutions (including the governments and the courts) at the nation-state level. The decision-making powers which have been transferred from the nation-state level, including from the parliaments, to the Union level have been largely re-distributed to supranational institutions which are not directly (electorally) accountable at nation-state level. It would seem that the Union, by virtue of the particular way in which it has re-distributed its acquired and accumulated supranational decision-making powers among its institutions, currently participates in the process of governance (geo-political management) in a far more top-down (see Elliott, 3 March 1997; and our Chapter 3) manner than has traditionally been the case among its current Member States. The more the Union progresses as a supranational organisation without altering its managerial style so as to far more closely resemble the approach to governance which has traditionally characterised and distinguished western liberal democracies (see Dunleavy and O’Leary, 1987; Hancock, 1993; Laffan, 1996a; Richardson, 1996), the more the Union’s democratic deficit will grow; and the more the Union will be a supranational regime that leaves itself open to the accusation of being a dictatorship: John Major yesterday made Brussels’ ‘dictatorship’ over Westminster a central battleground for the next election, after the European Court threw out Britain’s objection to the 48-hour Working Time Directive.