Law's Polyarchy: A Comment on Cohen and Sabel

This comment links Cohen/Sabels' idea of a 'directly-deliberative polyarchy' to the contemporary debate on the deficit in democratic legitimation of the European Union. Within this constitutional-legal debate the conventional options are either to defend a vision of the EU which separates global economic law from national sovereignty, and thus relies on the legitimising powers of free markets, or to regard the legitimation problem (at least under present conditions) as beyond solution: that is to say that any further progress towards an 'ever closer union' would inevitably increase the legitimation deficit, and to suggest that the capacity for political action of the nation state should be protected or restored. This comment seeks to show that the concept of a 'directly-deliberative polyarchy' offers an attractive alternative to these traditional positions because it breaks the stranglehold of the false dichotomy 'global market vs national democracy' and thus permits an extension of the idea of radical democracy to European Supranationalism.