Towards an Antifederalist Theory of the EU: Democratic Federal Lessons for the European Union

Several recent crises and the increasing populism and Euroscepticism across member states have intensified debates on the nature of the EU. While researchers have looked to US federal experience and theory, a bias remains towards the federalism of the Federalists and ‘Madisonian' lessons for the EU. In contrast, we argue that the federalism of the Antifederalists provides an alternative, more appropriate frame for assessing the EU's federal challenges. First, we revisited their political thought on democratic federalism and their opposition to the US Constitution. We derived three basic lines of federal‐democratic critique of the power of elites, and losses to state sovereignty and to democracy and popular control. Subsequently, we transferred them to the EU to analyse the corresponding challenges. Finally, we drew Antifederalist lessons for the EU. They may inform not only research on multilevel governments but also the search for a balance between governance, integration and popular rule in a compound polity.