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# How can you have a democracy without a demos?
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-can-you-have-a-democracy-without-a-demos/
- Published: 2007-11-21T13:11:41.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:38:16.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:31

**Moderator:* This is the final part of a three part exchange between David Marquand and Anthony Barnett. You can read the first part* [*here*](http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2007/11/19/europe-was-meant-to-evolve/?ref=opendemocracy.net) *and the second part* [*here*](http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2007/11/20/time-must-be-built-into-a-new-british-constitution/?ref=opendemocracy.net)*.*

**David Marquand (Oxford):**

Dear Anthony

Thanks so much. I agree about the elitist nature of the European project; I think that was probably the fundamental reasons why the French and Dutch referendums went the way they did. This is the crucial point - I guess - on which pro-Europeans should focus: how can we make the European project democratic instead of technocratic? More than 20 years ago, just after I left the Commission, I wrote a book about this called ‘[Parliament for Europe](http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19790901fabook14026/david-marquand/parliament-for-europe.html?ref=opendemocracy.net)': various Italian students have credited me with coining the term ‘democratic deficit' in that book, but I don't myself think I did. Where I stole it from I can't now remember. But anyhow my solution - basically the emergence of a trans-European party system divided between ‘surpanationalists' and ‘anti-integrationists' (in effect an echo of the early US division into Federalists and Democrats) isn't really satisfactory. The difficulty goes very deep: ‘How can you have a democracy without a demos?' I don't know the answer to this. The only thing I am sure about is that a serious debate about a new constitutional settlement for the UK should embrace it.

Here's a thought (maybe yours originally?) The two really fundamental issues now confronting would-be constoitutional reformers are the English Question and the European Question. In his excellent Liberty speech Brown mentioned neither!

Very best to you too!

David