Why we need to renew democracy in Europe: A brief excursus on the democratic deficit of the European Union

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,7, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, language: English, abstract: Certainly, at least in Europe and the United States, democracy is taken for granted. Not only is our political system democratic, our entire society is democratically organized. Our current understanding of democracy came about as a result of the emergence of the European nation-state. The functioning of modern democracy is consistent with the political system of the state. In the twentieth century the transforming processes of globalization, including the empowering of global institutions as well as technological revolution, influenced the role and functioning of the modern nation state. A new complexity and greater number of actors appeared on the world stage and the term ‘government’ was increasingly regarded as inappropriate in capturing political reality. The differentiated governance approach is more likely to be capable of dealing with complexity. But what are the effects on democracy? This term paper argues that change from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ forces a change in the concept of democracy as well. To prove this assumption the European Union is closely examined.