THE ENDURANCE OF SUPRANATIONAL GOVERNANCE - A CONSOCIATIONAL INTERPRETATION OF THE EUROPEAN-UNION

European integration is remarkable because it has created, sustained, and expanded a supranational political authority without a supranation al means of enforcement. The persistence of EU supranational authority can be explained through analogy to consociational theory. This theor y provides an empirically verified explanation of the stability of gov erning institutions whose authority depends on voluntary compliance in polities that are severely segmented, such as the EU. Also, according to consociational theory current reform proposals for the geographic expansion of the EU and institutional changes to fill the ''democratic deficit'' may undermine the stability of EU governance.