The paper suggests that the discussion of both questions can be advanced by systematizing the Europeanization of national parliaments in relation to three competing models of political community in the EU: first, an intergovernmental model highlighting the role of legislatures as principals of national executives; second, a supranational conception assuming the emergence of a European demos, to which national parliaments adapt through transnational networks and consultative contacts with EU institutions; and third, a model based on the concept of ‚demoi-cracy’, assigning an independent legitimizing role to parliaments as arenas of public debate and gate-keepers of domestic sovereignty.
In its empirical part, the paper reviews the activity of three parliaments in relation to this threefold distinction (investigating records of parliamentary procedure and other data sources for the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, and the Austrian Nationalrat). It is argued that although the institutional Europeanization of domestic legislatures is primarily modelled on an intergovernmental model, an independent legitimizing function of parliaments as conceptualized from the ‚demoi-cracy’ perspective is not just empirically observable but also the most promising perspective for the Europeanization of parliaments from a normative point of view.
