OLSSON, Jan <br/><br/>
Democracy paradoxes in multi-level governance :  theorizing on structural fund system research 

 - Oxfordshire :  Routledge,  April 2003 
<br/><br/> 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.