The academic debate on the EU democratic deficit has propelled a more comprehensive academic debate on the democratic theory of the European Union and, more general, on ways to conceptualise democracy beyond the state. The EU demoi-cracy school of thought, a recent thriving approach to the prospects of democratisation of the Union, provided an original normative model of transnational deliberative democracy that promised to avoid the pitfalls of either nation-state centred or supranational perspectives on the state of democracy in the EU. This paper will evaluate the guiding principles and organisational precepts of demoi-cratic theory. It will attempt to expose its underlying methodological nationalism and institutional biases the demoi-crats claim to avoid. Following this critical analysis, the paper will conclude with a non-ideal normative model of EU demoi-cracy.
