Paper short abstract:

Despite the vast literature on the EU, one question remains curiously unanswered: what exactly is the EU? Drawing on anthropological work on state-formation, I examine debates over the long-term trajectory of integration, the democratic deficit, and the vexed question of EU statehood.

Paper long abstract:

Recent debates over enlargement and ratification of the Constitutional Treaty have once again highlighted problems of democracy, legitimacy and identity at the heart of the project for ever-closer European union. The EU's so-called 'democratic deficit' is often blamed for holding back the integration process and undermining the credibility of EU institutions, yet little consensus exists over its causes or solution. Most analysts agree that the design of the EU means that policy-making at European level continues to be dominated by executive actors, ministers and government appointees whose actions are beyond the control of elected national parliaments. Solutions proposed thus range from strengthening the European Parliament to creating a more viable European public sphere and politicizing the EU agenda, However, few move beyond these arguments to ask more probing questions about the longer-term trajectory of the unification process, what Joschka Fischer termed the EU's finalité politique, or the social and political implications of where the EU project is leading.

In this paper I examine both the 'standard version' of the democratic deficit (Majone 1996; Moravcsik 2004, Weiler 1995) and more recent critiques (Follesdal and Hix 2005). I argue that what is missing from most of these debates is recognition of the problems of identity and cultural legitimacy that necessarily underpin successful democracies. I also suggest that political science debates over the EU's democratic deficit and institutional reform conceal another issue of much greater concern; the Union's steady evolution into statehood.