The Endurance of Supranational Governance: A Consociational Interpretation of the European Union

European integration is remarkable because it has created, sustained, and expanded a supranational political authority without a supranational means of enforcement. The political institutions of the European Union (EU) decide laws that are binding on EU citizens and that override any conflicting laws in the member-states. With authority over a variety of important and often contentious policy areas (for example, intraEU commerce, agriculture, and external trade), these institutions have provided stable governance for over thirty years.1 Moreover, the EU has persisted without a supranational means to enforce its policies: there is no EU army or police that coerces EU citizens to obey EU laws or prevents a member-state from leaving the organization. Instead, the stability of the EU's political authority depends upon the voluntary compliance of national governing institutions such as agencies, courts, and police and, ultimately, of citizens.2 What accounts for the stability of the EU's supranational authority? In this essay, I use consociational theory to address this question. Consociational theory provides an empirically verified explanation of the stability of governing institutions whose authority depends on voluntary compliance. Furthermore, consociational theory applies to segmented polities analogous to that of the EU. Thus, by reasoning through analogy consociational theory provides an explanation of the stability of EU political authority. After introducing consociational theory and applying it to the EU political system, I use consociational theory to evaluate how proposed reforms of the EU will influence its political authority. For example, consociational theory indicates that institutional reforms aimed at reducing the democratic deficit in the EU may undermine the stability of EU governance.3