Fishing in Muddy Waters: Principals, Agents, and Democratic Governance in Europe

The evolution of new forms of public governance in Europe presents a challenge to methods of democratic policy making, accountability, and control that are predicated on a theory of representative democracy. The article discusses the evolution of supranational institutions and considers empirical data on the democratic performance of governance networks in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. It concludes that bureaucratic actors in the European Union and in subnational governance networks operate to a large extent as political principals, which would in the theory of representative democracy, promote and in some cases determine public policy. Governance networks present a special form of third-party government, with a high degree of autonomy in their specific jurisdiction. The article outlines research strategies for democratic analysis that do not presuppose representative democracy.