Democracy paradoxes in multi-level governance : theorizing on structural fund system research
By: OLSSON, Jan
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ArticlePublisher: Oxfordshire : Routledge, April 2003Journal of European Public Policy 10, 2, p. 283-300Abstract: This article examines the EU structural fund system from a democratic point of view and starts theorizing on the nature of basic democracy problems. The analysis is guided by a parliamentary, a pluralistic and an lite-democratic model. None of these models seems to fit well with how the system works in practice, summarized as top-down and technocratic with important vertical co-ordination between administrative levels, which tends to marginalize the role of democratic institutions. Five types of fundamental problem are identified and analysed in terms of democracy paradoxes (multi-level, vertical, economic, horizontal, multi-demos). It is difficult to dissolve these paradoxes because they reflect existing structural fund institutions. In order to democratize, they need to be challenged, either by regulating partnerships in a more democratic way or by challenging the partnership principle with the parliamentary principle.
This article examines the EU structural fund system from a democratic point of view and starts theorizing on the nature of basic democracy problems. The analysis is guided by a parliamentary, a pluralistic and an lite-democratic model. None of these models seems to fit well with how the system works in practice, summarized as top-down and technocratic with important vertical co-ordination between administrative levels, which tends to marginalize the role of democratic institutions. Five types of fundamental problem are identified and analysed in terms of democracy paradoxes (multi-level, vertical, economic, horizontal, multi-demos). It is difficult to dissolve these paradoxes because they reflect existing structural fund institutions. In order to democratize, they need to be challenged, either by regulating partnerships in a more democratic way or by challenging the partnership principle with the parliamentary principle.
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