[lazyjones]

> It's the most diverse political landscape. That could potentially mean it's much more democratic than the US.

Democracy doesn't require a lot of parties, it requires that the people actually have the power to elect someone in charge. The EP is powerless and none of the EC members are elected or can be removed by a public vote.

[dragonwriter]

> Democracy doesn't require a lot of parties, it requires that the people actually have the power to elect someone in charge.

No, this problem has been studied and democracy (that is, rule by the people) empirically requires an electoral system that had the capacity to support multiple competitive parties; to the extent systems artificially limit the option space they produce results that are not representative of the will of the people.

[lazyjones]

> No, this problem has been studied and democracy (that is, rule by the people) empirically requires an electoral system that had the capacity to support multiple competitive parties

First democracy: ca. 500 BC

First political parties: ca. 1800 AD

We could discuss in detail whether the EU system or the US system enforces more artificial limits, in the end the EC remains much less democratic due to its relative power and independence from the electorate.

[orf]

I'm not sure how you can say with a straight face that political parties only came into existance in the 1800's.

Prototypal modern, organized political parties started to emerge in the 1700's. Do you think before then that everyone was an independent and had no common goals? Political factions predate even the first demcracy. There where a number of competing, and from many accounts solid, factions in both the greek and roman governing systems, which where for all intents and purposes a party.

[Dayshine]

>in the end the EC remains much less democratic due to its relative power and independence from the electorate.

Isn't the European Commission elected by the European Council, and formed of commissioners nominated by the democratically elected leaders of each member state?

Democracy doesn't have to equal direct election.

[n4r9]

By "EC" I'm guessing you mean European Commission? This is appointed by the European Council and requires approval from the European Parliament. If the make-up of the Commission is a point of serious public interest then the public can democratically enforce their interest via their choice of heads of states and MEPs.

More concerning is the inability of the European Parliament to repeal legislation, but things are gradually moving to change this.

[lazyjones]

> This is appointed by the European Council and requires approval from the European Parliament.

And now let's look at the past 3 presidents: always the same routine, the EP gets presented with 1 candidate and can say yes... or yes. Awesome democracy.

[n4r9]

Presented by the European Council, which is made up of directly elected heads of state. It's imperfect, but as someone living in the UK it's no worse than our own system.

[makomk]

The European Council isn't made up of directly elected heads of state, though - most of its members are indirectly elected prime ministers. This makes it the head of the European Commission at least one step further away from the people's influence than in the UK system. What makes this worse is that the European Commission has the exclusive power to propose new laws, whereas in the UK ordinary directly-elected MPs can do this.

[n4r9]

True, nevertheless in principle it is possible for voters en bloc to express democratic power over the choice of President.

[lazyjones]

I'm not sure comparing with a monarchy is the best effort we can make to judge the merits of the EU political system. ;-)

Living in a small, entirely democratic EU country, I can't say I'm impressed with how the Commission was formed and it's also obviously an inferior system to that of the USA.

[n4r9]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that that's a joke about the UK being a monarchy in anything but name! Its democratic issues are much more to do with the House of Lords, FPTP voting system and lack of press balance.

The power to directly elect or remove the top spot is certainly an important facet of democracy, maybe even the most important, but it's still just one of many measures. to be honest I don't think it's really that meaningful to talk about one system being "more democratic" than another, or that "entirely democratic" can apply coherently to anything except some kind of anarchist utopia.

That said, there is such a thing as the global [democracy index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) in which the US comes well below the UK and plenty of other EU countries. Note that Norway, also a constitutional and hereditary monarchy, tops the list.

[lazyjones]

> That said, there is such a thing as the global [democracy index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) in which the US comes well below the UK and plenty of other EU countries

This is rather meaningless as an indicator of the quality of the political system. The USA was downgraded there in 2016 for various reasons (probably mostly "Trump anxiety") while the political system was left unchanged.