ABSTRACT
There can be no democracy without a sense of belonging to a political collectivity. In most cases, the collectivity is a nation, but it could also be a township, a region, or a federation such as the body into which the European Union seems to be evolving. Democracy is based on the responsibility of the citizens of a country. If those citizens do not feel responsible for their government because it exercises its power in a territorial space that seems to them artificial or foreign, their leaders cannot be representative and the ruled cannot be free to choose their rulers.
