The European Union And British Democracy

This book examines evolving trends in democracy at EU and UK levels, pointing out the primary shortcomings of both. It examines the relationship between the democratic practices of the EU and the UK, explaining the paradox of the way in which the EU, despite the poor quality of its own democracy, has enabled devolved decision making in a novel multilayer polity. The book also considers future prospects for converged Western European democracy in the light of the Labour government's popularising agenda.

This volume addresses an important aspect of Brexit that has been ever-present in public debates, but has so far not received corresponding attention by academic scholars, namely the role of parliaments and citizens in this process. To address this gap, this book brings together an international group of authors who provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary treatment of this subject. Specifically, the contributors, scholars from the UK and across Europe, provide diverse accounts of the role of regional, national and European parliaments and citizens from the perspectives of Law, Political Science and European Studies. The book is structured in three parts focused on developments, respectively, in the UK, in the parliaments of the EU27, and at the EU level. Beyond providing a comprehensive examination of the scrutiny of Brexit, the book utilises the insights gained from this experience for a study of executive-legislative relations in the European Union more generally, examining the balance, or lack thereof, between governments and parliaments. In this way, the book also speaks to some of the long-lasting, indeed perennial questions about the effects of constitutional provisions and political practice in the context of European democracy.

Democracy in Europe is about the impact of European integration on national democracies. It argues that the oft-cited democratic deficit is indeed a problem, but not so much at the level of the European Union per se as at the national level. This is because national leaders and publics have yet to come to terms with the institutional impact of the EU on the traditional workings of their national democracies. The book begins with a discussion of what the EU is-a new form of 'regional state' in which sovereignty is shared, boundaries are variable, identity composite, and democracy fragmented. It then goes on to examine the effects of this on EU member-states' institutions and ideas about democracy, finding that institutional 'fit' matters. The 'compound' EU, in which governing activity is highly dispersed among multiple authorities, is more disruptive to 'simple' polities like Britain and France, where governing activity has traditionally been more concentrated in a single authority, than to similarly 'compound' polities like Germany and Italy. But the book concludes that the real problem for member-states is not so much that their practices have changed as that national ideas and discourse about democracy have not. The failure has been one of the 'communicative' discourse to the general public-which again has been more pronounced for simple polities, despite their potentially greater capacity to communicate through a single voice, than for compound polities, where the 'coordinative' discourse among policy actors predominates.

This book offers a new approach to the study of European democracy showing how this has developed through key episodes in the long history of the process: precursors in the Low Countries; the founding of British parliamentary then American federal democracy; post-revolutionary France; post-war Germany; the European Parliament. It examines the significance of each episode in the development of national or federal democracy and concludes with a positive assessment of the prospects of liberal democracy. This is an important book for political scientists, historians and others concerned with the development of democracy in Europe and beyond.

Brexit has changed everything - from our government, to our economy and principal trading relationship, to the organization of our state. This watershed moment, which surprised most observers and mobilized previously apathetic sections of the electorate, is already transforming British politics in profound and lasting ways. In this incisive book, leading analysts of UK and EU politics Geoffrey Evans and Anand Menon step back from the immediacy and hyperbole of the Referendum to explain what happened on 23 June 2016, and why. Brexit, they argue, was the product of both long-term dissatisfaction with the EU and a gradual breakdown in the relationship between parties and voters that spawned detachment, disinterest and disenchantment. Exploring its subsequent impact on the June 2017 General Election, they reveal the extent to which Brexit has shattered the contemporary equilibrium of British politics. These reverberations will continue to be felt for a very long time and could pose a real danger to the health of British democracy if the government fails to deliver on the promises linked to Brexit.

This substantially revised and expanded book provides a thorough overview of all aspects of Britain's relations with the European Union and an examination of the extent of the Europeanisation of British politics.

This text examines key questions in democracy, drawing on traditional concepts of political thought and empirical evidence to clarify the current situation. It offers critical insights into the EU and some of the arguments frequently used in its defence