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This book examines the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU) and evaluates the democratic credentials of the EU’s main decision-making procedure. It finds that though there is potential for democratic decision-making in the EU, the actual process is dominated by technocrats and secret meetings. The book assesses and discusses the conditions for democratic input in decision-making with five empirical chapters each addressing the ordinary legislative procedure from different dimensions: democratic deliberative forums, inclusion, openness, power neutralising mechanisms and decision-making capacity. The analytical framework provides for an in-depth assessment of the ordinary legisla...
Due to the increase of security challenges in the proximity of Europe, the prominence of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has augmented. This book is a systematic effort to empirically approach the democratic deficit of CSDP, to understand its social construction and propose ways to remedy it. The book uses Foucault’s approach of governmentality to unravel the social construction of this deficit and to illuminate the power relations between the different actors participating in CSDP governance and the constraints upon them. Finally, applying the normative reading of agonistic democracy, the author suggests concrete ways for EU citizens to have a say in the political choices of statesmanship in CSDP governance. The Democratic Quality of European Security and Defence Policy will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of EU foreign and security policy and more broadly of European governance, European Politics and democracy.
This book examines Britain and Norway in Europe from 1945 through to the former's departure from the European Union in 2020. It compares their European relations and investigates their bilateral relationship within the contexts of security, trade and, above all, European integration. Britain and Norway are outsiders in Europe, and they have both been sceptical of the continental federalist approach to European integration. The question of membership itself has been highly controversial in both countries: the public has been divided on the issue; it has plagued political parties and governments; and prime ministers have resigned over European issues. This book explores why these countries have struggled so deeply with the idea of Europe since 1945, and looks ahead to how the relationship between Britain and Norway might develop after Brexit.
This handbook comprehensively explores the European Union’s institutional and policy responses to crises across policy domains and institutions – including the Euro crisis, Brexit, the Ukraine crisis, the refugee crisis, as well as the global health crisis resulting from COVID-19. It contributes to our understanding of how crisis affects institutional change and continuity, decision-making behavior and processes, and public policy-making. It offers a systematic discussion of how the existing repertoire of theories understand crisis and how well they capture times of unrest and events of disintegration. More generally, the handbook looks at how public organizations cope with crises, and thus probes how sustainable and resilient public organizations are in times of crisis and unrest.
Trenz introduces a sociological perspective on European integration by looking at different accounts of Europeanization as society building. He observes how Europeanization unfolds in ongoing practices and discourses through which social relations among the Europeans are redefined and re-embedded. The chapters describe how the project of European integration has been powerfully launched in postwar Europe as a normative venture that comprises polity and society building, how this project became ingrained in every-day life histories and experiences of the Europeans, how this project became contested and confronted resistances and, ultimately, how it went through its most severe crisis. A socio...
Today’s Europe is marked by an amazing pace of integration. The European Union now consists of twenty five member states, however there is confusion and disagreement about its future design. Making The European Polity investigates how the European Union should develop and organize itself and offers a reflexive approach to integration based on the theory of communicative action. It conceives of the EU as a law based supranational polity lacking the identity of a people as well as the coercive means of a state and argues that it is a polity with an organized capacity to act, but no sole apex of authority. Making an important contribution to the theoretical discussions on the EU, these contributors explore a range of issues including legitimacy, post-national democracy and integration and provide in-depth analyses of social and tax policy, foreign policy, identity formation, the reform process and the constitutional effects of enlargement. This book will appeal to all political scientists and particularly to students and researchers of European Politics.
The widening and deepening of the European Union have brought to the fore the question of democracy at the European level. The system of domination already in place at the European level requires and aspires to direct legitimation - from the citizens themselves and not merely indirect, derived from the Member Nation States. Such can only be achieved by making the EU into a democratic polity. But can democracy be disassociated from its putative nation-state foundation? A revised concept of democratic legitimacy based on discourse theory is developed. It is argued that post-national democracy requires a constitution but not necessarily a state. The Union amounts to less than a state but more t...
Based on in-depth studies of the relationship between expertise and democracy in Europe, this book presents a new approach to how the un-elected can be made safe for democracy. It addresses the challenge of reconciling modern governments’ need for knowledge with the demand for democratic legitimacy. Knowledge-based decision-making is indispensable to modern democracies. This book establishes a public reason model of legitimacy and clarifies the conditions under which unelected bodies can be deemed legitimate as they are called upon to handle pandemics, financial crises, climate change and migration flows. Expert bodies are seeking neither re-election nor popularity, they can speak truth to power as well as to the citizenry at large. They are unelected, yet they wield power. How could they possibly be legitimate? This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, governance, and more broadly to political and administrative science as well as the Science Technology Studies (STS).
Climate change, economic crises, migration, and terrorism are among the many problems that challenge public governance in modern societies. Many of these problems are spanning political and administrative units; horizontally, vertically, and both. This makes public governance particularly challenging and turbulent. Since public governance mainly takes place through public organizations, like international organizations, ministries, and regulatory agencies, this book examines what difference organizational factors make in the governance process. The volume launches a general organizational approach to public governance. It outlines key theoretical dimensions that cut across governance structu...
This book uses constitutional analysis and theory to explore the transformation of Europe from the post-war era until the Euro-crisis. Authoritarian liberalism has developed over these years and, as the book suggests, is now perhaps reaching its limit. This book uses history and theory to reveal the EU's journey and highlight future challenges.