Democratic Deficit Critiques and the Non-Role of Epistemic Communities in the European Union
Dr. Osman Sabri Kiratli

Abstract
This paper focuses on the democratic deficit critiques of the European Union (EU). In the first part, it traces the factors behind the steep increase in the number of scholarly inquiries and analyses testing the democratic credentials of major intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and most prominently the EU, in the last two decades. In the second part, it investigates the reasons for the failure of the emergence of an epistemic community which, through expertise and scientific authority, could influence EU policymakers and guide them to adopt more democratic reforms. It is suggested that despite sharing normative concerns about the undemocratic structure of the European integration, experts greatly diverge first, on the causal factors which create the democratic deficit problem, second, on the notions of validity to test their hypotheses, that is, the type of polity that the EU is, and finally third, a common policy enterprise and the required remedies.

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