ABSTRACT
Most models of democracy offer an intragovernmental approach to democracy that says little about how to democratize intergovernmental forms of policy making that involves more than one elected government despite the frequent occurrence of such policy processes in contemporary policy processes. Intergovernmental policy making brings together two or more democratically elected governments—be they transnational, national, or subnational—in processes of shared policy making. It can bring together governments at different levels in the political system such as for example the European Parliament, national parliaments, regional and municipal councils, and elected city and village councils and user boards, and it can involve governments placed at the same level of governance. The failure to address the question of how to democratically regulate intergovernmental policy making can be seen as a serious void in democratic theory that needs to be filled, and this void is becoming increasingly apparent due to globalization and recent governance reforms (Greven and Pauly 2000; Heffen, Kickert, and Thomassen 2000; Holden 2000; Hajer, 2003; Bache and Flinders 2004; Kersbergen and Waarden 2004; Bogason and Zølner 2007; Marcussen and Torfing 2007; Torfing et al. 2012). The unsettled debates among students of globalization and governance about the democratic implication of recent developments in the political system is a direct result of the profound lack of criteria for evaluating democratic quality of intergovernmental policy making (Klijn and Skelcher 2007; Pierre and Peters 2005; Sørensen and Torfing, 2005; Dryzek 2007).
