The EU is precisely and deliberately the structure that was designed by politicians to make bypassing national parliaments ‘ever easier’.

In Weimar terms, we’re in 1931 and the Eurosoviet keeps clinging on, proclaiming bankers to be sacrosancts whilst (via the Euro) having reduced millions to poverty and unemployment.

And the EU powergrabs will not only not stop, the next years they will increase, all in the name of ‘saving the system’ or against ‘terror’ which in reality means to save plush unelected income-tax exempt jobs and to protect the EU from the ‘terror’ that they believe is democracy/referendums.

It seems, in fact, that we are constantly creating new forms of organisation, legitimacy and grassroots governance. This is not to say that parliaments will disappear, of course, but that the role and veneration with which we have traditionally invested them will continue to be adjusted. On the whole, we are arguably gaining far more than we are losing. And rulers are being held to account in a way they may never have been in history.

Your analysis tries to prove the point that we are in an exceptional period, but the evidence points otherwise. In periods of economic crisis/transformation, normal democratic channels (which are normally used to administrate rather than transform) aren’t used, usually because they are not (or are not seen to be) up to task.

Of course, if we compare what has gone on since the Great Recession with the post-Great Depression period, it would seem legislative supremacy and/or separation of powers is undermined. But it is rather easy to administer growth or at least stability.

The post-War consensus in favor of the welfare state also depended on the threat of Communism.

Now the West wants to compete on a race to the bottom. This requires changes that society will not choose democratically, they have to be imposed or politicians have to be willing to lose elections. Guess which one is likelier?

Some countries were hit by or dealt with financial and competitiveness crisis before others. Natural advantages (something nobody likes to talk about anymore) also have a crucial role.

Ceteris paribus, which is a cornerstone of economic analysis and current policy making, is fundamentally flawed when it ignores the role of history and geography in an economy’s competitiveness and governability.

Now we welcome most of the West into the kind of democratic ingovernability that other developing countries have experienced for decades.

IMF intervention may be something new for most “Western” European societies, but if something isn’t done, they had better get used to it.

Capitalist boom-bust cycles make “liberal” democracy inherently unstable. But different countries are hit in different ways depending on their institutional culture and their rung in the economic ladder (what you rightly call being in the periphery).

The left has failed in articulating an alternative. The lack of historical perspective makes it whine about democracy because of fear of focusing on the real culprit, the flawed capitalist race to the bottom.

Even those countries that choose kind of a different path are hardly able to escape our finance dominated world. Now even Iceland could soon send back to power the same people. The US elected Republicans hardly 2 years after the collapse of the economy. That is democracy.

When Franklyn Roosevelt started reforming the American economy he was called an undemocratic autocrat. Democrats thought Bush was an autocrat, now the same happens to Obama with Republicans. Democratic governance didn’t stop the US from having a Civil War.

In Europe democratic governance also didn’t stop wars. Now at least the “undemocratic” EU has helped maintain peace. Consensus can be democratic or undemocratic, depending on the context and ideology.

In Europe the British will find whatever comes from Brussels to be undemocratic. Yet the European Commission can suffer a vote of no confidence the same way that national governments. And given that the power of legislative initiative is held by it, that means that effectively the European Parliament can halt policy making if it wants to.

The core of most parliaments power for several decades now has been the ability to control governments. Most legislation is de facto government legislation. The UK, with executive control of the legislative agenda, is one of the best examples of this.

Budgetary control is a relative concept. If you decide to participate in international capitalist debt markets, then you don’t really control your budget or have fiscal sovereignty. Just ask Argentina.

Democracy is a mess. By saying that it is or could be otherwise you do more damage to democracy by inflating expectations in unrealistic ways.

Let’s stop idealizing the past and start thinking about ways to get out of this crisis. Democracy, like capitalism, has to be saved from its excess.

Democracy is currently in trouble in some countries because so is capitalism. But the core of neither is really being questioned. That is both good and bad.

We really need to keep perspective on things. Troika dictates in just the past century would have been followed up by invasions, blockades, etc. In previous centuries they would have led to de jure tutelage, suzerainty or outright annexation.

The second half of the 20th century was actually an exceptional period of peace, broad prosperity and stability in the West. We can either return to the previous “new normal” or try to build on the rather good institutional and economic legacy of that period.

The move to dismantle the welfare state is an attempt to reform, however misguided. Whether it is approved by law or decree is secondary. People would suffer (and theoretically benefit in the medium to long term) all the same.

The real question is why does the left have nothing positive to say. The focus on procedure just proves how hollow the response in substance is.

The challenge for the left now that the crisis has dissipated in the core countries seems almost insurmountable. But, hey, who foresaw the Arab Spring?

Having millions of unemployed youth is never a recipe for stability. And “stability” is always relative. A social movement can start in the periphery and spread to the core as fast as the fall of a stock exchange.