This book calls for a philosophical consideration of the development, challenges and successes of the European Union. The author argues that conceptual innovation is essential if progress on the European project is to be made; new meanings, rather than financial or institutional engineering solutions, will help solve the crisis. By applying a philosophical approach to diagnosing the EU crisis, the book reconsiders the basic concepts of democracy in the context of the complex reality of the EU and the globalised world where profound social and political changes are taking place. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in EU politics, political theory and philosophy.

The future of Europe as a community of democratic states is deeply uncertain. The European Union, founded to promote ‘ever closer’ integration, aims nominally for peaceful, prosperous cooperation. But this ideal has been battered by a series of bruising crises, and now by war. Protecting Democracy in Europe examines how, in this brave new world, the EU can and must safeguard democratic governance within its member states. Reviewing the Union’s past responses, Tom Theuns demonstrates that its existing laws and policies are normatively and expressively incoherent. Its failure to defend democratic values is unsurprising: the EU’s existing toolbox is based on an impoverished conception of democracy, and runs counter to its fundamental principles. Close attention to speeches by European Commissioners shows that they see democracy in a technical and legalistic way. This perspective–‘democracy without politics’–is easy for would-be autocrats to exploit. To protect democracy in Europe, Theuns argues, the EU must urgently correct policies that make it complicit in democratic backsliding. It must contain autocratic influences (within the strict limits of its political authority). And it must cultivate pluralist democracy within its constituent countries. But where this fails, he concludes, autocratic members should be expelled.

In 2007, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, the representative and the voice of local and regional authorities throughout the continent, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its creation. Originally conceived to make the voice of local authorities count in the incipient European unification, with the passing years it was able to transcend this strict role in order to help to reshape the continent in its own way, particularly by promoting regional policies. This study follows the growth of the Congress and presents the many initiatives it has taken to help the towns and regions of Europe to develop harmoniously, whether at the political, economic, social, cultural, or environmental level. It has been behind numerous European conventions, today recognised all over the continent, and tirelessly contributes to the consolidation of local and regional democracy in Europe. Besides its work, it is the podium and the meeting place for all European local and regional elected representatives, giving it specificity and a wealth unique among the European institutions. While retracing the path travelled over the past fifty years, this study highlights the importance of the towns and regions for tomorrow's Europe and presents the major challenges facing them for the future, together with the solutions that will enable them to meet those challenges.

Expertisation and Democracy in Europe provides a much-needed account of the role and re-organisation of expertise and expert knowledge in Europe and the European Union in a broad range of policy spheres, contributing to the debate triggered by the recent crises. It brings novel perspectives to debates on technocracy and our understanding of the relations between knowledge, experts and democracy. The book explores and assesses new and old linkages between knowledge, expertise and democracy, and expands and deepens the current debates by addressing questions such as: What is the role of expertise in Europe? How is knowledge of different kinds embedded in and decisive for democratic practice in contemporary democracies? How are we to assess recent transformations of the expert-citizens and government-civil society relationships from the perspective of democracy, and which paths are viable in the years to come? Finally, the book engages with and gives flesh to the notion of expertisation not only as a broad political and societal diagnosis, but also as a multidimensional and deeply contested process that enfolds in concrete practices and institutional settings. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European studies, European and European Union politics, democracy, public policy, international relations, sociology, gender studies and media studies.

From small-scale experiments, deliberative mini-publics have recently taken a constitutional turn in Europe. Iceland and Ireland have turned to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions. Estonia, Luxembourg and Romania have also experienced constitutional process in a deliberative mode. In Belgium the G1000, a citizen-led initiative of deliberative democracy, has fostered a wider societal debate about the role and place of citizens in the country's democracy. At the same time, European institutions have introduced different forms of deliberative democracy as a way to connect citizens back in. These empirical cases are emblematic of a possibly constitutional turn in deliberative democracy in Europe. The purpose of this book is to critically assess these developments, bringing together academics involved in the designing of these news forms of constitutional deliberative democracy with the theorists who propagated the ideas and evaluated democratic standards.

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world. Democracy in Modern Europe surveys the conceptual history of democracy in modern Europe, from the Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century through both world wars and the rise of welfare states to the present era of the European Union. Exploring individual countries as well as regional dynamics, this volume comprises a tightly organized, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date exploration of a foundational issue in European political and intellectual history.

For the first time, this book reveals the actual roles of the Christian Democratic (CD) parties in postwar Europe from a pan-European perspective. It shows how Christian Democratic parties became the dominant political force in postwar Western Europe, and how the European People's Party is currently the largest group in the European Parliament. CD parties and political leaders like Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi played a particularly important role in the evolution of the 'core Europe' of the EEC/EC after 1945. Key chapters address the same questions about the parties' membership and social organization; their economic and social policies; and their European and international policies during the Cold War. The book also includes two survey chapters setting out the international political context for CD parties and comparing their postwar development, and two chapters on their transnational party cooperation after 1945. This is the companion volume to Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1945.

At the end of the twentieth century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years it competed with various forms of dictatorship. Now, though, the entire continent was in the democratic camp for the first time in history. But within a decade, this story had already begun to unravel. Some of the continent's newer democracies slid back towards dictatorship, while citizens in many of its older democracies began questioning democracy's functioning and even its legitimacy. And of course it is not merely in Europe where democracy is under siege. Across the globe the immense optimism accompanying the post-Cold War democratic wave has been replaced by pessimism. Many new democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia began "backsliding," while the Arab Spring quickly turned into the Arab winter. The victory of Donald Trump led many to wonder if it represented a threat to the future of liberal democracy in the United States. Indeed, it is increasingly common today for leaders, intellectuals, commentators and others to claim that rather than democracy, some form dictatorship or illiberal democracy is the wave of the future. In Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe, Sheri Berman traces the long history of democracy in its cradle, Europe. She explains that in fact, just about every democratic wave in Europe initially failed, either collapsing in upon itself or succumbing to the forces of reaction. Yet even when democratic waves failed, there were always some achievements that lasted. Even the most virulently reactionary regimes could not suppress every element of democratic progress. Panoramic in scope, Berman takes readers through two centuries of turmoil: revolution, fascism, civil war, and - -finally -- the emergence of liberal democratic Europe in the postwar era. A magisterial retelling of modern European political history, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe not explains how democracy actually develops, but how we should interpret the current wave of illiberalism sweeping Europe and the rest of the world.

Over 800 million Europeans can individually obtain a ruling from a European court against their State if it has violated their human rights. There is an assembly in Strasbourg where members of the Icelandic, Russian, Portuguese, German, Georgian and other European parliaments all sit together. A Congress exists whose sessions are attended by representatives of 200 000 local and regional authorities of Europe. All these statements relate to the Council of Europe, the first of the European institutions to be founded. Now 47 member states strong, the Council - which is to celebrate its 60th anniversary this year - has become one of the main institutions of intergovernmental co-operation. This book looks at the political role of the Council of Europe, which is now not only a forum for democracy and a gage of stability, the home of human rights and the forum of cultural diversity, but also the crucible of Europe and the future for politics. The author examines all that is specific to the Council of Europe within the European architecture, particularly vis-á-vis the European Union. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to study the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, understand how it operates and find out about the contribution that it makes.