increases system stability and problem-solving efficiency. Of course, democracy requires a functioning political infrastructure that mediates between decision-makers and citizens. In the member states, this function is performed by political parties and by media-based public discourse. However, parties and the media belong to those institutions, which are most strongly linked to the historical development of the respective states. And so what is politically important and discussed controversially in one member state does not have to be so in any of the other. As a result, even a political debate in Germany as the biggest member state would not have much impact on the European scale. In sum, the EU is faced with a dilemma between efficiency and democracy. The political decision to create a European market requires political decision-making powers at the European level. Their democratic control, however, is hampered by structural problems of the Europeanization of democracy and its social preconditions. Which Type of Policy is then the best? Whereas the political debate focuses on whether the EU should or is likely to become either a federal state or an association of states, it seems that this conception of the EU's prospective development in terms of opposing alternatives misses the present state of the EU. The debate in particular should not restrict itself to comparing the sad reality of European democracy to the bright ideals of the democratic nation-state. At the same time, the argument that there is no real problem of democracy because democratic nation-states kept firm control over the integration process is not very convincing either. For this reason, there are two common theories of EU political organization models, which are not conceptually based on the image of the state. Two such models will be briefly presented here. In the first place, these models are provisional attempts to grasp the rapidly changing and confusing reali...
