ABSTRACT
As the European Union (EU) is being constructed increasingly as a political entity more attention is being paid to how its institutional evolution corresponds to national demands. It is necessary to understand how political responsibility patterns are structured (MacMullen 1999), and moreover how they are related to accountability, policy and transparency considerations (Bovens 2007). We want to know whether the extension of direct democracy (Binzer Hobolt 2007) challenges the EU polity. Quite naturally, the question of how representation is taking place on the European level is a significant issue, and most importantly, how the party vote at the national level is being transposed to the European level (Reif & Schmitt 1980; Marsh 1998; Hix & Marsh 2006). All these issues and considerations are part of and belong to the democracy deficit debate and they influence the evaluation of European unification.
