This paper draws attention to Max Weber’s commitment to federal democracy in a series of newspaper articles in 1917, which he wrote in the face of Germany’s military dictatorship. He argued for the division of executive, administrative and political functions between the Reich and the separate German states, not unlike the constitution of today’s German federal state. Weber advances a number of process arguments about how large states within a confederation are able to exert control that is insufficiently accountable to parliaments. It is suggested his views on federal democracy can be used as a critique of hegemonic and undemocratic features of today’s European Union.