Intergovernmentalism and the crisis of representative democracy: The case for creating a system of horizontally expanded and overlapping national democracies

Technocratic intergovernmentalism has undermined the preconditions for its own success as a democratic project of transnational cooperation. It has triggered populist reactions within nation states and helped to discredit the intermediary institutions (parties and parliaments) that connect democratic will-formation and joint decision-making. This rise of populism and its alignment with nationalism, in consequence, hampers joint decision-making in the international realm. We argue that representative democracies can overcome the negative spiral between technocratic intergovernmentalism and nationalist populism by mutually granting their citizens the right to elect representatives not only in their domestic parliament, but also in the parliaments of ‘consociated democracies’. Such a system of horizontally expanded and overlapping national democracies can serve three functions: it re-empowers citizens in a world of cross-border flows, it curbs the self-destructive polarization of party systems and it facilitates cooperation among democracies within the European Union (EU) and beyond. Finally, we discuss three competing approaches: Liberal Multilateralism, Deliberative Transnationalism and Republican Intergovernmentalism. We point to common ground, but also show how our approach avoids their main pitfalls.