Within democratic theory, there are at least two main approaches to the question of political integration: the Madisonian (or power dividing) approach and the Millian (or power sharing) approach. This paper argues that, as far as multicultural and multinational democracies are concerned, the Madisonian approach is neither normatively desirable nor institutionally feasible—it is bound up with a politics of the lowest common denominator and is in any case very hard to implement. By contrast, the Millian approach is much attuned to the relationship between democracy and the pursuit of larger common goals and purposes or what one might refer to as higher common denominators. However, the Millian approach is open to the objection that it, too, is difficult to implement. In particular, advocates of the Millian approach must be able to show that the emphasis on higher common denominators is compatible with the accommodation of religious, cultural and national differences. This paper argues that, appropriately understood, integration and accommodation are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, in complex multicultural and multinational democracies, the two should be viewed as mutual implicating.
