I accept many of the criticisms and qualifications that the eight participants in this forum have advanced with regard to my skeptical position regarding enhanced participation and democracy in the European Union. On other issues we must agree to disagree.1 Below I consider each critique in turn.

I agree with Andy Moravscik that more "participation" is not, in itself, a cure for what ails Europe. I've always regarded the "democracy deficit" as a symptom rather than a cause of the underlying problems with political integration in Europe. And I can't dispute Moravscik's underlying point that people would argue less about the EU if they took less notice of it.

Andrew Moravcik's article, "What Can We Learn from the Collapse of the European Constitutional Project?"seems to me to hit the nail on the head in terms of the expectations that empirical political scientists would have had for the behavior of citizens faced with a quasi-constitutional debate. His argument could have been strengthened by referring to survey evidence (for example Schmitt and Thomassen 1999; Gabel 1998; van der Eijk and Franklin 1996). The critical point that survey evidence adds to Moravcik's argument is that voters are not fools. They can apparently identify a real debate on a topic that is going to affect their lives in important ways. And they behave as though they know a fake debate when they see one. As Moravcik points out, Europe already has a constitution in all but name, and the proposed replacement would not have affected voters' lives in any important respect. Had it been otherwise (and had they been supplied with sufficient cues to this effect) they would have become aware of this and taken the trouble to inform themselves sufficiently to weigh in on the decision. As things stood, they were faced with a non-decision and most of them reacted quite rationally by failing to take any interest in it - thus leaving the debate to the extremists on both sides, as Moravcik also points out.

I agree with many of the points made by professor Moravcsik in his stimulating paper on the lessons to be drawn from the collapse of the European constitutional project. Thus, I share his doubts about the usefulness of the exercise leading to the draft Constitutional Treaty-an exercise in public relations; but also, as Moravcsik notes without elaborating the point, an attempt to reverse the sagging popularity of the Union. I also agree that participation and deliberation do not necessarily generate political legitimacy.

Moravcsik is absolutely right in observing that the European constitutional project failed to mobilize citizens across our member countries and generate support for further integration. And how could it? The term constitution is clearly a misnomer, changes in Council voting procedures and rotating presidencies may be a step in the direction of better delivery but hardly the stuff that excites most people, while the policy part of the old treaty remained virtually the same. Practical changes were presented as a major political project, and they backfired - at best, they met with indifference.

Crisply reasoned argumentation, even when it is dead wrong, is always welcome in the debate on the alleged crisis of democracy in the European Union. Andrew Moravcsik's recent contribution is certainly well argued, and we agree wholeheartedly with his dismissal of the recent European Constitution as a legally unnecessary project driven primarily by public relations motives. His lessons for what we can learn from that debacle, however, are questionable. We question two central elements in particular: its basis in empirical political science and the implications of those findings for questions of democracy.

Moravcsik's critique of EU popular consultation concentrates especially on two causal connections he regards as dubious1: First that "greater participation generates more informed deliberation." and second that "more informed or intensive decision-making generates greater public trust and a deeper sense of common identity and legitimacy" (p. 222). The supposed flaws in these propositions undermine the notion that "more populist and deliberative democratic forms" will "generate participation and legitimacy" (p. 221).

Andrew Moravcsik's faithful readers will find here the qualities that earned his work its reputation: a tight argumentation systematically structured, and polemic in the noblest sense of the word. They will also rekindle their acquaintance with several of the theses the author has set forth in his best known earlier publications: The European Union is not a federal State in the making, the status quo is sturdier and more rational than it may appear at first, and democratic deficit is a myth. Moravcsik both condenses and extends these theses, after the schumpeterian method he favours: pick out a conviction achieving quasi-axiomatic status in the literature, and pull it apart calling on the authority of contemporary social sciences' most robust resources.