How can we conceptualize identity and legitimacy in the context of the European union? What is the role of narratives, political symbols, public debate and institutional practices in the process of identity formation and legitimacy consolidation? Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union addresses these questions and brings together high profile scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds to debate the ontological and epistemological aspects of research on identity and legitimacy formation in the EU. Part I investigates key elements such as the relationship between ‘Europeanization’ of the EU member states and its effect on the political identity of their citizens; the relationship between the politicization of the EU and processes of identity and legitimacy formation; and the indispensability of European identity for legitimizing the EU. Part II looks at pathways to identity formation and legitimacy construction in the EU by considering alternative types of constitutional legitimacy; political symbolism; Europeanization and politicization of the debate on EU focusing on the foreign policy domain. Bringing together a wide but coherent range of high profile perspectives, this book will of interest to students and scholars of European studies, Political Science, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.

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.

Most of the contemporary debates about the European Union - about its role, its institutional arrangements, its development dynamic, its expansion and possible futures - revolve around the issue of political legitimacy. Legitimacy and the European Union addresses the fundamental issues at the heart of the debates on Europe and examines such key questions as:- -What is the scope of the EU's authority -Is there a legitimacy deficit? If so, how much does it matter -Does political legitimacy only reside in the nation state? Using a multi-dimensional conception of political legitimacy, the text analyses the character and problems of the European Union's authority in respect of democracy, political identity and governmental performance. Its distinctive claim is that political legitimacy can now only be understood as a process of interaction between the state and EU levels, and that this interaction impacts differentially on different member states.

Makes the innovative effort of examining the interplay between political identity and legitimacy in the unprecedented but also unfinished development of the European Union into a fully fledged political actor.

Since the Maastricht ratification debate of the early 1990s, the legitimacy of the European Union has become a subject of controversy. With unprecedented force, Europeans have begun to question the need for deeper integration. Some fear threats to established national identities, while others perceive the emergence of a distant but powerful Brussels, beyond the reach of democratic control. Legitimacy and the European Union breaks with established approaches to the problem of the legitimacy of the European Union by focusing on the recent trend towards reconceptualization of the EU not as a superstate or an organization of states, but as a multi-level, contested polity without precedent. The book examines the implications of this reconceptualization for the problem of legitimacy. Individual chapters focus on policy areas, institutions and identity politics. Taken together, they reach two main conclusions. While Europeans do not strongly identify with the EU, they increasingly recognize it as a framework for politics alongside existing national and subnational structures. And while the EU lacks central democratic institutions, the integration process has spawned significant informal and pluralist forms of representation. Rethinking recognition and representation ouside the context of the nation state points to important, if little understood, actual and potential sources of EU legitimacy.

As a consequence of various rounds of EU enlargements, the degree of cultural diversity in Europe has intensified a phenomenon which is increasingly perceived as problematic by many EU citizens. This fascinating book not only empirically explores the current state of the identity and the legitimacy of the EU as viewed by its citizens, but also evaluates their attitudes towards it. The expert contributors show that the development of a European identity and a common European culture is a prerequisite for European integration; that European identity and a common political culture will not develop rapidly but emerge slowly, and that the beginnings of a European identity and a common European culture are currently emerging. The roles of civil society organizations and political parties are examined within this context, and an explanatory model with subjective predictors of the attitudes towards the EU is tested. The empirical analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework incorporating operational definitions and conceptual discussion of legitimacy and identity. This intriguing and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students focusing on political science and international relations.

Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features of a democratically legitimate European Union and the conditions required to bring it about. Part One presents a novel theory of democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which subsequent analyses are based. Part Two defines the EU as a demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this political system. Part Three explains why Belgium has largely succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part Four presents a model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly reduce its democratic deficit and ensure that this political system does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.

The legitimacy of the European Union is a much studied and highly contested subject. Unlike other works, this book does not engage in another review of the shifts of public opinion and perception regarding the EU. Instead, it offers a different and innovative perspective by focusing on constructions of legitimacy in the European Commission. Starting from the premise that legitimacy is discursively constructed, the book engages in a fine-grained analysis of legitimacy discourses in the European Commission since the early 1970s. Embedded in a poststructuralist theoretical framework, Hegemonies of Legitimation also sheds light on the conditions that made radical shifts of legitimacy discourses possible, and illustrates how these discursive shifts paved the way for different types of legitimation policies. As such, the book maps and reconstructs the historically variable discursive landscape of competing articulations of what legitimacy signifies in the case of the EC/EU, and provides us with a detailed picture of the history of the Commission's struggle for legitimacy.

3. The Renaissance Idea of Europe.

After moving for ten plus years towards an ever closer union, the European Union and its citizens now face the choice whether to establish a full-fledged common polity. This decision requires a Europe-wide debate that includes the candidate states. European citizens must discuss what (if any) common values, principles and basic policies they share. A European identity involves the Union's institutions becoming rooted in the "soul" of the citizens, whatever its relationship might be to the existing national and local identities. Only then will the EU possess democratic legitimacy and support. These two volumes are written by authors with a political and intellectual interest in the European process. They discuss the EU's unprecedented character as a peacefull and voluntary union of peoples, its understandable obstacles encountered along the way to further integration, and the Union's less acceptable shortcomings. The first volume is written for the general reader. It examines the essential components of a European political identity in relation to democracy, citizenship, social justice, war and peace, freedom and borders. It also explores the history of this identity. The second volume is a collection of scientific essays. These provide in-depth analysis of fundamental aspects of European cultural identity such as religion, art and economic culture, myth and civil society. The two volumes can be read independently. However, we hope readers of either one will feel stimulated to reach for the other.