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.

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.

Beetham and Lord provide concise and analytical coverage of a key topic within the European Union, that is, the legitimacy of European supra-national governance.

Taking as its starting point the major issues of democracy which are the ongoing concerns of every liberal Western political system, this volume offers a wide-ranging review of democracy in the European Union. It treats the EU as a new type of political system within the tradition of parliamentary democracies, a system which is neither federal nor intergovernmental, and which consequently has unique problems of how to handle democratic requirements. Part One deals with the two major challenges of interest articulation in the EU, political parties and lobbying. The second part discusses how democracy becomes the key element in the linkage between the EU and its member states, focusing on France, Italy and Belgium where the relation to the EU constitutes an important part of the national democratic debate. The third part focuses on democratic aspects of key EU institutions - the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament. The final part looks at democracy in relation to possible EU development generally, and in the context of societal change which may tend to undermine the role of parliamentary institutions.

Focusing on the EU, this volume, with a combination of theoretical perspectives and empirical research, examines the problems multilevel governance causes for democratic legitimacy by placing it in a comparative and theoretical context, and explore how challenges faced by the EU compare with those faced by traditional federal systems worldwide.

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

Essay from the year 2022 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, language: English, abstract: The main questions of this study are: What is the EU actually, how does the EU system work at all and which goals and values is the EU pursuing? How is the EU institutionally structured and who are the main actors in the EU? How does the EU make decisions, how does it act and how is the EU democratic? Corona, the rule of law, migration, the economy, relations with the USA and China: The European Union (EU), which is far from always being united itself, faces a multitude of challenges. The EU is often criticized in the system of international relations for showing a "democratic deficit". In this essay, the foundations, institutions, and procedures of the EU system are discussed with a view to the central question of whether this criticism is correct and whether there are ways to give it democratic legitimacy or to increase it. In view of the initial questions, the fundamentals, central institutions, and procedures of the EU are discussed within the scope of the present study to better understand the complex relationships and the controversial position. This makes it possible to find answers to important problem areas about the democratic legitimacy of the EU. The aim is to make an objective and scientific as possible contribution to the debate on the "EU Project" whose finality is unknown.

Democracy is the only legitimate form of political power in societies that regard individuals as free and equal. Yet many have doubted whether the European Union is, can be, or should be democratic. Is the European Union unsustainable in its present form? Must it either take a precarious gamble on forming a full democratic political system of its own or, as some have argued, downsize so that it can be controlled by its member state democracies? A Different Kind of Democracy? helps answer these questions by bringing together some of the most important contributions to the literature on democracy and the European Union. It includes arguments for and against the claim that the European Union is in democratic deficit; reflections on the possibilities and problems of forming a European Union demos (democratic political community); and proposals for how the Union might be made democratic. Each of these topics is introduced by a careful analysis of the normative and practical questions it poses. As well as being of interest to scholars of European integration, the reader is indispensable to all with an interest in prospects for democracy beyond the state.