ABSTRACT
Whether we need democratic procedures at the European level can be contested. There are good arguments why democracy might interfere with the requirements of steering complex systems. This certainly holds at the transnational level where the problem of steering a society of nation states requires forms of politics that do not easily go together with the idea of democratic politics. The theory of the regulatory state (Majone 1994) states that democratic procedures that maximise participation may become incompatible with the functional task of supranational institutions to regulate social and economic processes beyond the national level. A way out of this dilemma is to give back to national institutions as many regulatory functions as possible, thus reducing supranational regulatory institutions to the minimum possible in order to simultaneously maximise efficiency and democracy. The nation state thus returns as the best container for having both efficiency and democracy. This is a possible path which reduces transnational institutions to their instrumental function and links their durability to their capacity to provide efficient solutions.
