The European Union: A study in the accountability of supranational institutions

There is a current trend in the world to strengthen multinational organizations that call for the transfer of national sovereignty and decision making to supranational institutions. However, many people fear losing their country's sovereignty to unaccountable multinational institutions. If these organizations are to have any real hope of gaining popular support, they must have democratic institutions in which people feel they have some control.; If supranational organizations are to be democratic, they must be held accountable. The European Union is the most developed supranational organization currently in existence. By examining its attempts to democratize itself by expanding the role of the European Parliament some judgments may be made about the ability of supranational institutions to support accountable, representative government.; For the elections to the European Parliament to demonstrate democratic accountability in a supranational organization they must pass a series of tests that assess whether they really are transnational elections as opposed to being a series of unrelated national contests. First, if there is to be accountable government there must be accountable parties. In a supranational legislature purely national political parties can not be properly held accountable. For the Parliament to be accountable it must have transnational parties or, at least, parties that are exclusively European in their focus. A test of whether this is occurring is to measure the degree to which representation in the Parliament differs from that in domestic legislatures. Using the Gini coefficient measure of inequality this difference can be quantified.; Secondly, the test of accountability using the Gini coefficient is most valid when it can be shown that voters have the same concerns at the European level as they do at the domestic one. The first approach to this question is to review the content of the elections themselves. Were they indeed conducted as European campaigns or did they concentrate on domestic issues? The second is to examine the voters' actual behavior and statements based on survey data regarding their concerns regarding European Parliamentary elections.