Democracy and pluralism after European integration: Incorporating the contested character of the EU

Recent years have seen multiple controversies between the EU and its member states that revolve around different conceptions of what kind of polity the EU is, and what it should be. These controversies are particularly heated when fundamental democratic values are at stake. In this article, we address the fundamental tension between the assertion of common EU values and the pluralistic character of the EU polity, both among and within member states. The driving question of this article is how we can understand controversies between the EU and its member states in light of the presence of alternative conceptions of the EU and its democratic and pluralistic character. We reconstruct two opposing conceptions of the EU – the intergovernmental and the cosmopolitan conception – and then analyse how the disagreement between these fundamental conceptions plays out in five key controversies. We argue that the disagreement over what the EU is, and what it should be, is inherent to EU politics. The EU can only become democratic if it recognizes these conflicting understandings and provides political arenas in which the disagreements between them can be articulated, confronted, and resolved.