Talk:Democratic deficit

There doesn't seem to be any mention of parliamentary monarchies - isn't there a democratic deficit within this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callumgg (talk • contribs) 15:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Where's the mention of the United States' democratic deficit? Perhaps the single largest in the world, yet not a single word on the page or in this dicussion. A testament to the pervasive brainwashing that US corporate media has foisted upon its citizens, and indeed the entire world.

I'm concerned that this page is entirely about the EU. It could do with some more information about democratic deficits in general, and the UN's supposed deficit in particular. Anyone? Wombat 10:02, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought the same thing too, but I'm not an expert. Maybe the reason is that the European Union is the only institution in the world that officially "confesses" that it has a democratic deficit and points out where it lies, which I believe is the best attitude. I have read most of the arguments in the article in official EU documents. All other other states or organizations apparently do not have any democratic deficit, or they don't seem to have a problem with it. I believe you can never have too much democracy, but it would be controversial to claim that there is a deficit when the interested party 's official position is that there is not one. Ulixes 01:36, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

The European Union hasn't confessed it has a democratic deficit, the term is fairly contentious and there's intense debate about whether a democratic deficit exists and if so what form it takes. However, I agree that this article is entirely about the EU, whilst arguments about democratic deficits are made with respects to numerous states - the U.S among them. I would advocate including some of those in this article, but also creating one solely dedicated to the democratic deficit in the European Union as it's a highly complex issue that couldn't be done justice here in my opinion. --blankfrackis 20:32, 16 November 2006(UTC)

I created a specific page relating to the democratic deficit in the European Union. --blankfrackis 23:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The discussion of eventual democratic deficit in the EU should be based on the presentation of correct facts on not on statements of beliefs; one of those facts is: The Lisbon Treaty was ratified by parliamentary vote in twenty-six Member States, whereas in Ireland the Treaty was ratified by Irish voters in a second referendum 16 months after a rejection in a first referendum (IBDBGR, 27/05/10). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ibdbgr (talk • contribs) 11:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Link to German eurosceptic article

An anonymous user added this link to several different EU pages today: [1]. I removed it from the European Constitution page since it doesn't belong there. It might belong here since its topic is apparently the EU's democratic deficit, but I'm not sure. It's a paper by a German pressure group calling itself Mehr Demokratie ('more democracy'). It is heavily eurosceptic, but it seems measured. While Wikipedia is not a links repository, I'm not sure if it might be of interest to readers of this article. What do others think? Wombat 19:11, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Subsidiarity

This passage appears in the section about the proposed Constitution not doing enough to rectify the democratic deficit - "The constitution specifically spelled out that, for those areas of policy where member states share competence with the EU, national governments may act at national level only where they have not already acted through the EU. In other areas, member states confer sole competence on the EU, i.e. they agree to act only at European level (Article I-12)." This seems to imply that when the EU dictates what a national government must do, this is in fact the national government "acting at EU level". Does this make sense to anyone? Someone else telling you what to do is not you acting through them, it's someone else telling you what to do.

Hi Mortypsmith (don't forget to sign your talk with ~~~~). My view is this: I don't see how the EU be said to "dictate what a national government must do", when all EU laws are in fact decided by our own national governments in the Council (and elected MEPs).

This is part of a wider misconception, in my opinion. When people complain about "the EU" (or "Brussels") telling us what to do, they are never very clear about who they mean. It can't be the Commission, since that body can only make proposals and carry out what's agreed, not decide on them. But the other two institutions consist of our own elected national governments and elected MEPs respectively, so that can hardly be said to be "someone else telling [us] what to do".

Another point, by the way, is that we can only act at European level (or, if you prefer, 'the EU can only act') in areas where all countries have already agreed that. That's why the constitutional treaty constantly talks about powers conferred on the EU by member states, a phrase I notice you deleted when you tried to quote the relevant treaty article. That's another way in which we can be said to be 'acting at European level', rather than 'being told what to do'.

That's just my opinion, though; I'll happily go along with the majority view here. Wombat 09:39, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I get the impression this page isn't very closely watched, as it's fairly new. So if we don't get any more feedback here, we could move this discussion to a more widely watched page like European Commission, Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe, or Euroscepticism. Wombat 09:42, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Wombat, yes I did forget to sign my contribution, sorry about that. Turning to your specific points, I am aware that the European Parliament has to vote on any proposals put forward by the Commission before they become law. However, in practice I don't think this is much of a restraint on the Commission's power. In an atmosphere of backstairs horse-trading and the proverbial smoke-filled rooms, it tends to get what it wants, even if it means submitting the same bill a second or third time with token alterations. This situation, of course, is likely to be exacerbated if the Commission gets its way in making it harder for Eurosceptic parties to compete with Europhile parties.

As for the Commission itself, you're right that one of the Commissioners is British, currently Peter Mandelson. However while he is one of 25, I can't see that the Commission's actions are in fact Britain "acting at EU level". You may say that Europe-wide decisions and policies can hardly be determined by Britain's interests alone, and that's precisely the point - why have Europe-wide decisions and policies in the first place? Even in an ideal world, an economic policy (for example) which has to accommodate every country from Latvia to Portugal is liable to suit some of them better than others. This, and not the cheap xenophobia that we are often accused of, is the central Eurosceptic point.

As to how we got here, you're right of course thst national governments must take the blame for giving these powers to EU in the first place. However, it should noted that the people of Europe never gave them licence to do so. In Britain, for example, the referendum in 1975 was over whether we wished to belong to a free trade area, and this has gradually been transformed into a politicial union without any further reference to public opinion.

If any national government were to call off a general election, there would quite rightly be an uproar, but in fact they have done something much worse - allowed general elections to continue as window-dressing whilst abrogating power to the extent that 80% of our laws are now made elsewhere and imposed on us from above. The Euro grandees who dismissed the French and Dutch referendum results by saying "Well, they weren't really voting on the details of the Constitution..." have only themselves to blame. These two nations, like the rest of us, have been presented with European integration as a series of faits accomplis. When they were at last asked for their opinion, it would not be surprising if they voted on the project as whole rather than just the most recent stage of it. Mortypsmith 09:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I largely agree with your comments about referenda and faits accompli, but let's be careful not to get off the point here. We're discussing whether this article should refer to (a) "the EU telling national governments what to do" or (b) "national governments acting through the EU". Issues of domestic politics, such as the extent of public support for the government's actions in any given country, are not relevant to this specific question, important as they no doubt are in general.

I didn't refer to the fact that the Commission contains a British Commissioner. I didn't even touch the issue of how democratic the Commission itself is. Instead, I referred to the fact that EU laws are not made by the Commission. My point is that the question of whether or not the Commission can "tell national governments what to do" is, as we used to say in philosophy classes, ill-formed, since it is Council and Parliament that make law, not the Commission.

We can argue all we like about how often Parliament and Council do in fact amend or reject Commission proposals, and the reasons behind that (about which I think we would also disagree!), but that too is a different debate. The question at issue here is: who is responsible for the laws that are made at EU level? My point is that it is national governments and MEPs. Whether they do their job properly is something we might debate another time. The central point is that they, not Commissioners, are responsible for each and every new EU law.

(By the way, there's a dizzying array of figures banded about regarding how much of UK legislation originates in the EU - 60%, 70%, 80% - invariably with no source. The actual figure, according to research by the House of Commons library in April this year, is 9% [2]. That is, 9% of all statutory instruments (not just primary legislation) adopted in the UK since 1980 have their origin in EU legislation. Where did you hear the 80% figure?) Wombat 08:57, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The 80% figure originally came from Germany's Federal Justice Ministry, quoted in a piece in Die Welt by Daniel Hannan [3] This refers to Germany, of course, but Hannan has said elsewhere that the figure for the UK is between 50 and 80% depending on how you measure it [4] He is perhaps referring to a study by the House of Commons library (is this the same study you are quoting?) which stated that of the regulations affecting British business since 1998, more than half originate with the EU, but their cost is disproportionately higher - more than 80% in fact [5] I note that your figure of 9% covers the whole period since 1980, which would no doubt bring the average down since there have been several arrogations of power by the EU since then.

As for your more general point about who is responsible for EU legislation, no doubt the European Parliament is at fault for not being a more effective brake on the Commission's baser urges. And I take your point that the responsibility for any new laws rest ultimately with MEPs, since they are the ones who must approve new legislation. My point is that the system is set up this way for purely cosmetic reasons - the Commission gets whatever it wants passed into law, but a veneer of democracy is maintained by having a parliament rubber stamp it first. Whilst the MEPs may technically be responsible for not preventing them, that doesn't change the fact that EU law is, effectively, the Commission imposing its will on Europe - all the more so since EU laws overrule national laws, whether or not national parliaments have ratified them. Mortypsmith 12:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, the link I provided for the 8% figure includes a breakdown by year for every year since 1980, and since 1980 the overall trend has been for a decrease in the number of instruments that originate at EU level, not an increase. There was a sudden spike in 1995 (not sure why) but since then the proportion has been consistently low.

Anyway, perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my previous reply. Responsibility for EU laws lies with Council (i.e. national governments) as well as with Parliament (i.e. MEPs). The only way one can maintain that the EU foists its will on national governments is by ignoring the fact that all new EU laws are passed by national governments themselves meeting in the Council (and indeed by conflating the distinct concepts of national governments and national parliaments).

I would heartily disagree with your sweeping statement that "the Commission gets whatever it wants passed into law" and that the democratic scrutiny is "cosmetic" - for a whole swathe of reasons, I think this is far less the case at EU level than here in the UK - but as I said above, that discussion is irrelevant to the question here. What's relevant is that the Commission is powerless to force national governments to do anything they don't want to do, full stop. There is simply no way that national governments can say no to a new law and the Commission still do it anyway. It would be an abuse of language to try to pretend that this equates to governments "being told what to do". Wombat 15:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Notwithstanding all the above, I don't see how you can ignore the fact that the Commission has the sole right to propose new European legislation. Although the Council and Parliament can in theory reject whatever the Commission proposes, you must be aware that for many policy areas the Council requires only a qualified majority in favour, not unanimity. Parliament also of course only requires a majority. Therefore it is entirely possible that a new European law could be forced on a national government that didn't agree with it, so long as most other governments did. Even if one ignores the fact that the Commission can resubmit (with token alterations) any proposals that don't get through the first time, and that it is currently trying to use discriminatory legislation to tilt the balance of opinion within the Parliament even further in its favour, it seems perverse to insist that new European laws are the sole responsibility of the Parliament and Council (because they could have voted them down) but nothing at all to do with the Commission (which has the sole right to initiate them!)

(As an aside, I find it interesting to see how often pro-Europeans play down the importance of the Commission. We hear, for example, that it is "the EU's civil service" - as if any civil service ever had the right (let alone the sole right) to initiate legislation. Could it be that they do this rather than defending it precisely because having an unelected oligarchy at the top of the EU's food chain simply isn't defensible?)

I note also your point that democratic scrutiny can also be cosmetic at national level. Indeed, we have certainly seen that a government with a large majority can force through almost any law it wants, since it can survive even quite a large revolt by its own backbenchers. But a national government has such a large majority if and only if the people have democratically decided that it should, and it will likely lose that majority (and perhaps lose office) if it is seen to be abusing it. No such argument can be made in favour of the Commission. Neither incidentally does the British government have the sole right to initiate British legislation, when one considers Private Members' Bills (no doubt equivalent arrangements exist in other countries).

Ya basta. In any case, the rules of Wikipedia as you explained them to me state that something must be presented as a point of view rather than a fact if not everyone agrees with it, as is clearly the case here. I have in this spirit made a change to that paragraph on the page. Mortypsmith 01:11, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Then to save further debate (though I was rather enjoying it) I'll just say that I agree with your changes. Cheers Wombat 11:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

Only one side of the debate is presented in the United Kingdom section. Tim! 10:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

United Kingdom - Devolution

This section doesn't really appear to have anything to do with the article. I think it really should be removed until it can be replaced with more specific information on democratic deficit in the United Kingdom, or at least an explanation of how devolution and the concept of democratic deficit are linked. --Pappa 14:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I changed the Campaign for an English Parliament reference to the English Democrats. The former is a pressure group, the latter is a registered political party, and the line referred to political parties. Also, it confused devolution and parliament. An English parliament presupposes devolution, otherwise it can have no power.--Swahilli 01:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Focus

This artical has taken a very indepth POV towards the EU then the title of the artical would suggest fair. It should either have the EU section given its own artical or have the content trimed down some. The term is used in Canada and perhaps other countries and this artical should reflect that. I'll try to add the appropraite information when I have more time. If a concensus can be reached on what to do with the EU section, that would be great. --Wilson (talk) 22:42, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Weasel words

The "European Union" section is packed full of weasel words:

• "Those who argue"
• "Many eurosceptics argue"
• "detractors say"
• "Critics of the democratic legitimacy of the EU"
• "many would argue"
• "some commentators" (twice!)

Who are these people, and when and where did they say these things? Hairy Dude (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Correct English

Shall we not redirect this page to the more correct "democracy deficit" (and rewrite it to take into account the change)? Or should we also change the "Music theory" page to "Musical theory", and the like? Both terms are in use, so we might as well choose the one that's correct. PeterH2 (talk) 14:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Correct English

I don't know which is better. Democracy Deficit is better English - but no one in the world, neither media nor scholars, talk about a "democracy deficit". The term which everyone is using is "democratic deficit". I don't know if Wikipedia is the place to try and change that. --QuotationMan (talk) 07:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If usage is democratic deficit, then we should leave it the way it is. (But OUCH! :) ) PeterH2 (talk) 18:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Both terms are widely used, but democratic deficit (which, yes, is not very good English) is more widely used. I would have no objections to changing the page title, but since democratic deficit is more widely used, it should probably remain as it is. Samuel Webster (talk) 13:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Bill Newton Dunn

The article refers to him as coining the phrase in 1986. According to the Democratic Deficit in the EU wiki page, it was coined as early as 1979. I copied text (with two citations) from there to this article, removing the passage about Bill Newton Dunn's use of the word in 1986. If his use of the phrase is still noteworthy, it could be re-worded and re-inserted. Below is a link to the diff of my edit. -Ich (talk) 20:35, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democratic_deficit&action=historysubmit&diff=353416542&oldid=337416247

Original Research

This article suffers from a lot of original Research. Rather than explaining the concept of "Democratic deficit", it spends a great deal of time providing examples that have been personally selected by editors without any supporting cite identifying them as a Democratic deficit.

I think examples of "Democratic deficit" will invariably be matters of opinion, but at least we should make them the opinion of reliable sources and recognised authorities. We also don't really need so many examples in order for the reader to understand the concept. The unsupported examples should be removed. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 17:56, 2 February 2016 (UTC)