strong sense of European solidarity to allow an EU welfare and security regime to
develop.
Obviously, libertarians often approve the very features of current arrange-
ments these theorists criticize (Barry 2004 ). However, so do some social
democratic theorists who take a more adaptive stance and believe multiple
demoi can only achieve adequate representation and control within a poly-
centric polity. Developing republican ideas (MacCormick 1997 ; Bellamy and
Castiglione 2000 ; Bellamy 2003 ), they see this division of power as a means of
curtailing certain attributes of national sovereignty that permit various types
of domination and exclusion by hegemonic groups without recreating them
at the supranational level. States remain largely autonomous, but they must
now attend to at least some eVects of their activities on other states and are
encouraged to cooperate with them to overcome common bads and create
common goods. A system of mutual checks and balances allows unity to
be combined with respect for diversity. Although imperfect, the challenge for
the future lies not in creating a European demos but in enhancing the
interaction between the various subnational, national, and transnational
demoi and rendering their representatives more accountable on European
matters (Schmitter 2000 ).
5 Conclusion
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
The EU has forced political theorists to address a new setting. How far that
requires a parallel rethinking of basic assumptions and principles remains
unclear. At present, the new bottles of supranational institutions areWlled
with the old wine of nation-state politics. However, the process of intense
inter-state and inter-citizen cooperation is producing some novel blends. The
EU can be plausibly characterized as an intergovernmental organization of an
advanced kind, a nascent federation of states and a new form of post-
national, post-state entity. Its true novelty may lie in mixing elements of all
of these, or it may be destined to collapse into one or other of them.
Normative theorists have oVered plausible arguments for each of these
scenarios, but which one ultimately prevails will be a matter of real rather
than ideal politics.
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