Globalization, transatlantic regulatory cooperation, and democratic values

Abstract

This chapter offers a perspective drawn in important respects from traditional conceptions of representative democracy. It recognizes that regulatory cooperation entails a series of trade-offs between transparency and participation on the one hand, and regulatory efficiency and technocratic autonomy on the other. For those pursuing novel means of legitimizing efficiency and autonomy in the international context, however, the chapter queries whether one can de-emphasize the importance of traditional majoritarian voting in any particular polity as a basis of ‘democracy’. Because democratization in this traditional, essentially state-confined sense is not possible in the international context, it suggests that international regulatory processes should focus on legal rather than political institution building. Accordingly, the development of democratic mechanisms outside the confines of the nation state will, as the EU experience demonstrates, likely be an evolutionary process.