ABSTRACT
In the historical context of ‘globalisation’, in which territorial boundaries no longer offer even the promise of popular, democratic control over a wide range of policy-areas, one seemingly more attractive strategy is to seek a solution in available models of multi-level governance. Given the dominant role of the United States in world politics, and of North Americans in contemporary political theory, it is not surprising that the US federal system has become a model for debating transnational democracy. In the case of the European Union, for example, the US federal system is both an implicit and an explicit model. The best-selling book by Larry Siedentop (2000), Democracy in Europe, for example, explicitly uses the American federal model as the datum for discussing proposals for European governance. Siedentop (2000:231) concludes that ‘Federalism is the right goal for Europe. But Europe is not yet ready for federalism.’
