America's global role has meant that the diffusion of democracy has been influenced by something more than the ideological hegemony of the democratic model. American power in the 'production structure' has exerted a powerful influence in favour of liberal, free-market economics, the kind of economic arrangement most commonly associated with democratic politics. The development of the European Community (EC) is, in important respects, a functional response to changes in economic structures which have threatened the viability of the democratic state organized at the national level. In the EC the level economic playing field inevitably requires equalization of aspects of welfare payments the rights to which had become one criterion of modern national citizenship. Democracy and citizenship are bound together, the development of democratic government at the level of a supra-national European Community is hardly likely without the development of a system of European citizenship.