A Democratic Dilemma: System Effectiveness versus Citizen Participation

The unexpected rise in opposition to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 reflected in part an abrupt heightening of awareness about possible trade-offs that the designers and supporters of the treaty had largely ignored. The treaty was intended to create in due time a common currency among the twelve members of the European Union (EU), common policies on defense and foreign affairs, and greater authority for the EU over many of the policies social, economic, and environmental of the member states. (Before Maastricht the EU had been called the European Community.) Increasing references to the democratic deficit in the political arrangements of the EU revealed a concern that whatever other benefits might result from the treaty, they could come at the cost of submerging a national democratic government into a larger and less democratic transnational system. Maastricht presented citizens and leaders (in a country like Denmark, for example) with a fundamental democratic dilemma: They could choose to preserve the authority of a smaller democratic political unit (Denmark) within which they could act more effectively to influence the conduct of their government, even though some important matters