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Book Reviews Yet another book dealing with the EU’s democratic deficit in the still new series on ‘Governance in Europe’. Inevitably this raises questions concerning the value added of this collaborative project between three Canadian and four German scholars. Though the aims and objectives of the editorial team were modest, even a mapping of the debate can become a daunting task once the overriding problematique is set in the broader context of democratic theory and globalization. Greven and Pauly master this task well by contrasting pessimistic viewpoints (Greven in Ch. 3 and Offe in Ch. 4) with the more optimistic accounts of Zürn (Ch. 5) and Grande (Ch. 6). While the former pair see no evolving ‘transnational demos’ to support democracy beyond the nation-state, the latter two identify ‘complementary’ mechanisms at the EU level which over time will do just that. This core of the book is surrounded by Newman’s contribution (Ch. 2) advocating ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ and Clarkson’s innovative attempt (Ch. 7) to evaluate NAFTA in terms of democratic deficits and surpluses. Both authors show how findings derived from the North American experience can help to arrive at a composed and cool reading of the EU’s democratic balance sheet. Of course, and not too different from the evaluation of democracy in the European context, the assessment of a book is also a question of standards. If the reader sets very high standards, he might have wished to see all authors agreeing on a common definition of democracy before embarking on further analysis. Similarly, he might have wished to see within each chapter a better balance between theoretical reasoning and empirical investigation. Together with some opaque terminology (‘post-national democracy’, ‘deliberative networks’) the demand for European-wide referendums would then surely come up for revision. Finally, those genuinely interested in comparative analysis might see this volume as a missed opportunity for drawing lessons from the development of democracy inside Canadian and German federalism. However, most buyers of the book should be satisfied with overall refreshing perspectives on the role democratic processes can or cannot play in multilevel polities. In particular, at a conceptual level it opens up several new routes along which the legitimacy of European governance can be explored. Greven and Pauly have provided us with an effective antidote to all those who would like to turn the analysis of the EU into a neatly designed cottage industry of policy studies.
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