Research Papers

This paper addresses an aspect of ‘compound representation’ that has not hitherto attracted significant attention, namely that the EU, it the provision of the Lisbon Treaty, mixes two forms of subjectivity in its ‘system’ of representation: one normative target are individuals, the other are states. The EU’s ‘system’ of representation meanders between two different visions of democratic representation in and for the EU. Firstly, there are national representative democracies which rest on the political equality of individuals. Secondly, there is a supranational system which is based on the equality of states that represent their people at EU level. The Lisbon Treaty does not give guidance as to how these two different forms of democratic representation are related to each other, whether there is or should be a hierarchy among them, and whether they are compatible at all. The mix of these two forms of subjectivity, so our argument, contributes to the blurring of political equality at both levels of government, and has the potential to undermine democratically legitimate politics at domestic level in two ways: (1) the more citizens of Europe gain competence at EU-level, the more the citizens’ national competences become potentially hollowed out if a majority of national citizens are outvoted by the majority of European citizens. (2), the more states’ executives gain power at EU-level, the more their national constituencies are bound by supranational compromises in a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ manner. The aim of this paper is to theoretically address the two conceptions of political representation with regard to equality that are present in the Lisbon Treaty and to empirically relate them to the empirical reality of different channels of representation as they exist in the EU.