ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses the relationship between democracy and federalism in the European Union against the backdrop of the historical experience of the compound polities. Carl Schmitt argues that without a people homogenous enough to constitute political unity, neither a federation nor a democracy can exist. The proponents of the Union as a democracy insist that the EU integration process offers historical evidence against Schmitt's argument that a triumph of democracy invariably annuls the federal character of a community. The concept, presenting the EU as a community of others, dissents completely from the view of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which in the European either/or dilemma takes the side of the states. The political unity of the EU was built on cooperation between national and European ruling elites, supported by the ideological beliefs of intellectuals and the interests of economic elites.
