Few of us are likely to accept what we perceive to be rule ‘by someone else’s democracy’. Not only, though, does a democracy require citizens to identify with it and feel it is theirs, it may also require some determinacy in the definition of its membership: in who is an ‘insider’ and who is an ‘outsider’. Voting systems that require careful and uncontested calculations of majorities are especially dependent on this requirement.
Representative democracy presupposes some agreed means of establishing congruence between representatives and represented, if it is to be clear which votes should contribute to the elections of which representatives, and which representatives should participate in the making of which binding decisions. But even more deliberative forms of democracy presuppose some understanding of who is and who is not to be included in the conversation on a basis of equality.
On top of all this, we will later encounter the argument that the self-determining ideals of democracy must extend to the design of democracy and presumably, therefore, to the definition of the demos themselves.
Amongst relevant measures of this indicator are: (1) degree of identification with the EU by member state, by social group, and by knowledge of the EU; and (2) perception of importance of the EU in relation to other levels of government.
More details to be provided.