nationals enjoy multiple citizenships. However, these cannot be viewed as
either discreet or hierarchically organized, with lower levels being encom-
passed by the higher like a Russian doll. EU competences are not clear-cut,
but mutually interact. Some regard this situation as unstable; others see the
interaction as beneWcial—producing mutually respectful modiWcations in
national or subnational allegiances, while checking the pretensions of any
supranational authority (Weiler 1999 , ch. 10 ; Bellamy 2001 ).
Attitudes to the demos problem will clearly inXuence one’s approach to the
institutional question. Claus OVe( 2003 , 439 – 40 ) has argued that the persist-
ence of territorial, class, and religious conXicts within Europe has, following
the disastrous attempts of the totalitarian regimes of right and left to remove
their sources, led to Europeans placing a high premium on handling diversity
through compromise, cooperation, and constraint in ways that acknowledge
its legitimacy and inescapability. The proportional, consensus democratic
arrangements, corporatist bargaining, and social market economy that pre-
dominate in Western Europe largely reXect this tendency. Some social demo-
cratic commentators see the EU as the natural extension of this system within
a globalizing context (Habermas 1999 ). The chief problem is the current
institutional set up. Ironically, they see the EU as unable to counter American
economic and military hegemony because it possesses a radical version of the
United States system that divides power both horizontally and vertically,
sharing decision-making between a member state appointed Commission,
the largely secret meetings of the various Council of Ministers, and an
EP elected on domestic rather than European issues. These arrangements
allow too many veto points, favoring a negative integration of liberalizing
measures and lowest common denominator standards over a more positive
integration involving a redistribution of costs and beneWts (OVe 2000 ;
Morgan 2005 ). Such measures cannot be achieved through voluntary coord-
ination and regulative governance. They require the central authority of
a democratic government able to impose common policies deriving from
fair but collectively binding decision procedures. They seek to strengthen
decision-making within the EU through such devices as enhanced
qualiWed majority voting in the Council of Ministers, an increased role—
including the ability to initiate legislation, currently the prerogative of the
Commission—for the EP, and a stronger, more activist ECJ. They locate the
chief source of the democratic deWcit in the absence of clear lines of respon-
sibility and accountability. Once these are established by more centralized
decision-making, a European demos will naturally form along with a suYciently
256 richard bellamy