The Brexit Vote: A Challenge for Models of Democracy and Constituent Power in the European Union

Abstract

Recent research in international political theory has yielded a number of competing models of democracy and constituent power in the European Union. In one way or another, all of these models presuppose, envisage, or advocate bonds of community between the citizens of Europe. These elements are framed, for example, as the willingness to preserve the sovereignty of each other’s polities through supranational institutions, as the mutual opening of demoi, or in terms of a cross-border demos. The result of the Brexit referendum poses a challenge to these ideas as it seems to contradict the claim that the EU rests on a founding authority that is more than the sum of its parts, that is, more than a loose aggregation of member state peoples. What explanatory, analytical, and normative traction do accounts such as regional cosmopolitanism, demoi-cracy, multilateral democracy, republican intergovernmentalism, or pouvoir constituant mixte still have after the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU? The panel brings together proponents of important models of democracy and constituent power in the EU to shed light on this issue.