Political Representation And Legitimacy In The European Union

How severe a problem is what may be called the democratic deficit of the European Union? This volume elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit.

Recoge: Part 1: Political representation in the European Union - Part 2:Political support for the European Union.

This book confronts and discusses different conceptions of political representation with respect to their application to the system of multi-level governance in the European Union. Political representation is an essentially contested concept. Its meaning has evolved with the development of representative democracy at the level of the nation state, and normative theories of political representation often evolved as a reflection on developing practices rather than the other way around. Since the EU is not a conventional nation state, and since the effectiveness and legitimacy of classic notions of political representation at the level of the national state has also become a matter of dispute, the EU has become a playground for the development of alternative or additional conceptions of democracy. The contributions to this volume evaluate these alternative conceptions with regard to both their effectiveness and their legitimacy, and combine both conceptual and empirical analyses. This book was based on a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.

The power of the European Parliament has been steadily and visibly increasing, but the already low rate of turnout in European elections has declined. This text analyzes these concepts of applicability at the European level.

Recoge: 1. Democracy. -- 2. What future for parliamentary democracy in the EU. -- 3. The public sphere and civil society: prerequisites for democratically legitimate rule making. -- 4. Democracy and political participation. -- 5. Deliberative democracy.

The contributors to this book examine the issues of constitutional choice that face the governments and citizens of today's Europe. Divided into three sections this study addresses: questions of political legitimacy and the meaning of democratic deficit in the EU; the reality of what institutional reforms and decision making processes are possible; and the rights of citizenship and values that should be protected.

In recent years the financial and economic crisis of 2008–9 has progressed into an equally important political and democratic crisis of the EU. These troubled times have set the framework to re-assess a number of important questions in regard to representative democracy in the EU, such as the normative foundation of political representation, the institutional relationship between representatives and represented, the link between democracy and representation and new arenas and actors. This book examines the diverse avenues through which different sorts of actors have expressed their voices during the Euro crisis and how their various interests are translated into the decision-making process. It offers a state-of- the-art assessment of what political representation means in this context as well as a contribution to the ‘representative turn’ in democratic theory. The authors address three key themes: • The main actors and channels of political representation in the EU. • Interlocking levels of representation in the EU and the way in which national and supranational representation works. • How the European institutional system represents EU citizens through law and administration. Focusing on the importance of representation in the legitimation of democracy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, European studies, democratic theory, representation studies, civil society and transnational democracy.

In European societies social differentiation, value pluralism and international integration have brought about a condition of previously unknown complexity. Citizens’ expectations regarding political participation and the legitimization of government policy are rising, yet the capacities for social integration and political consensus formation may be in decline. This volume investigates how political actors and institutions in established European democracies are seeing to manage the condition of complexity and how this condition reconfigures the foundations of democratic politics. From the Contents: Legitimacy Crises, Efficiency Gaps, Democratic Deficits Efficiency versus Democracy: Conceptual Reconciliation of a Troubled Relationship? Citizens’ Expectations: Is what matters only what works? Re-engaging Citizens: Institutional Responses to Political Disengagement Informal Government Delegated Authority: Legitimizing Independent Regulatory Agencies Delegation to the EU The Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) and The European Employment Strategy Committee Governance in EU Agricultural Policy Efficiency versus Legitimacy: The Governance of Technology Does citizen involvement improve the quality, legitimacy and implementability of environmental policy? The Allocation of Health Care The Post-democratic Turn: Complexity and the Reconfiguration of Democratic Politics