Is there a ‘Democratic Deficit’ in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis

TLDR

Scholars, commentators, and politicians claim that international organizations suffer from a severe democratic deficit, and empirical judgment uses advanced industrial democracies as a baseline. The article proposes a basic framework for evaluating the applied ethical critique of global governance regarding democratic deficit. The framework rests on two criteria: philosophical coherence, requiring consistent adherence to a conception of democratic legitimacy, and pragmatic appropriateness, calibrating that standard to realistic expectations in a second‑best world constrained by transaction costs, commitment problems, and justice claims. Using these criteria, the European Union is judged democratically legitimate, establishing a point of legitimacy on the continuum of international institutions for further analysis.

Abstract

Abstract Many scholars, commentators and politicians assert that international organizations suffer from a severe ‘democratic deficit’. This article proposes a basic framework for evaluating this applied ethical critique of global governance. It rests on two criteria. The first, philosophical coherence , dictates consistent adherence to one or more conception of democratic legitimacy (libertarian, pluralist, social democratic or deliberative). The second, pragmatic appropriateness , requires that any philosophical standard be calibrated to reasonable expectations in the ‘second-best’ world constrained by transaction costs, commitment problems, and justice claims. The latter judgement is in large part empirical, for which existing constitutional practices in advanced industrial democracies provide the most reasonable baseline. By these two criteria – regardless of which specific conception of democracy is adopted as a starting point – the European Union appears to be democratically legitimate. This establishes a point of democratic legitimacy on the continuum of international institutions that could be analysed using this framework.