Challenging Executive Dominance in European Democracy

Deirdre Curtin 

Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance
December 20, 2013

Modern Law Review, 77(1), 2013
Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2013-77
Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance Research Paper No. 2013-09 
Abstract:      

Executive dominance in the contemporary EU is part of a wider migration of executive power towards types of decision making that eschew electoral accountability and popular democratic control. This democratic gap is fed by far-going secrecy arrangements and practices exercised in a concerted fashion by the various executive actors at different levels of governance and resulting in the blacking out of crucial information and documents – even for parliaments. Beyond a deconstruction exercise on the nature and location of EU executive power and secretive working practices, this article focuses on the challenges facing parliaments in particular. It seeks to reconstruct a more pro-active and networked role of parliaments – both national and European – as countervailing power. In this vision parliaments must assert themselves in a manner that is true to their role in the political system and that is not dictated by government at any level.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 43

Keywords: European Union, executive power, representative democracy, secrecy, parliaments, co-operation

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2370333