A More Democratic Community: The Place of Democracy in the History of European Integration

The histories of European unification and of West European democracy during the second half of the twentieth century have often been considered as separate or even antagonistic processes with the institutions of European integration being regarded as bastions of bureaucratic rule. A More Democratic Community challenges this assumption and argues that European integration benefited from the democratic accountability of member states while contributing to the validation of national democratic institutions. However, it also unveils a paradox: as integration deepened, it diminished the power of national parliaments, sparking a democratic accountability crisis within the Community. This insightful volume sheds light on pivotal reforms addressing Europe’s perceived democratic deficit.

Umberto Tulli is Lecturer at the Department of Humanities and at the School of International Studies (SIS) of the University of Trento. He is currently working on the EEC and the human rights breakthrough of the 1970s. His latest book is A Precarious Equilibrium. Human Rights and Détente in Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy (Manchester University Press, 2020).