The academic debate on the EU democratic deficit has propelled a more comprehensive academic debate on the democratic theory of the European Union and, more general, on ways to conceptualise democracy beyond the state. A wide array of recent approaches to the prospects of democratisation of the Union focused on transnational deliberative democracy and promised to avoid the pitfalls of either nation-state centred or supranational perspectives on the state of democracy in the EU. This paper will start by an assessment of the guiding precepts of this transnational democratic school of thought. It will attempt to expose its underlying weakness of focusing too much on institutional arrangements without a nuanced account of social preconditions for their functioning. Following this critical analysis, the paper will suggest a turn to the theory of political culture and civic culture approach in EU studies as a remedy.
