Federalization and Democratization in the European Integration Process

This paper addresses the relationship between federalization and democratization. The first part discusses the relationship between federalism and democracy, and points to zones of overlap and divergence. In today’s world it is difficult to form a federation as a ‘big bang’ or in one fell swoop, through a federal constitutional moment. We therefore need to think of the development of federal democracy in explicit process terms. The chapter outlines two distinct process logics: federal democratization and democratic federalization. Federal democratization highlights the development of the federal machinery of government, and democratization is understood as the development of democratic institutions at both levels of federal governance. This top-down process of federalization is contrasted with democratic federalization, which is a bottom-up process of popular mobilization and pressure, and underlines that any federalization process must be subject to democratic controls. The two models refer to very different combinations of federalism and democracy. The paper applies these two process logics to the EU in order to shed new light on what model (or combination) marks the EU and what challenges it is facing.