The democratic deficit is a theory developed by scholars in order to illustrate that the European Union and its institutional bodies suffer from a lack of democracy (Wincott, 1998, p. 414). However, there are many definitions of the democratic deficit (Chryssochoou, 2000; Justice, 1996; Warleigh, 2003; Weiler, Haltern & Mayer, 1995) depending on the views and approaches of each scholar. Joseph Weiler's ‘standard version' of the democratic deficit is one of the most common definitions and it is a set of widely-used arguments by academics, scholars and the media (Weiler et al., 1995, cited by Follesdal & Hix, 2005, p. 4). It consists of five claims that explain why the EU can be called undemocratic and they are the following: a) there is an executive dominance because of European integration, which decreased parliamentary control, b) the weakness of the European Parliament, c) the lack of "European elections", d) the EU is "too distant" from the citizens and finally, e) the "policy......

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Title: European Democratic Deficit
Approximate Word Count: 2744
Approximate Pages: 11 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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