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 legislative procedure’s potential democratic qualities and examines whether it fulfils democratic criteria, how the procedure works in practice and whether it has the necessary democratic clout. The author provides both a theoretical discussion and an empirical assessment of what role the principle of democracy could play in the EU. Filling a gap in EU legislative studies and contributing to the debate on the European democratic deficit, Democratic Decision-making in the EU will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, legislative studies and deliberative democracy.

This book provides a practical guide to how groups of people, everywhere, from the local village council to the United Nations Security Council, can best make collective decisions. By comparing the many voting procedures used in democratic decision-making, it explains why win-or-lose binary voting can be inaccurate and divisive, while the more inclusive preferential points system of voting can be so much more accurate and, therefore, more democratic; indeed, it is a win-win methodology. The text, essential reading for anyone interested in fair and participatory collective decision-making, also compares the most common electoral systems.

Political corruption contributes to the decline of citizens' trust and confidence in democracy and weakens democratic principles and processes. The contributions in this book identify risks that corruption poses to the future of democracy in Europe, and propose a wide range of measures for action which are aimed at preventing political corruption (including undue influence on the justice system), enhancing transparency and accountability, and rebuilding confidence in democracy.--Publisher's description.

As the power and scope of the European Union moves further, beyond traditional forms of international cooperation between sovereign states, it is important to analyse how these developments are impacting upon national institutions and processes of democratic representation and legitimacy in the member countries. The authors in this book identifyfour core processes of democratic governance present in any democratic political system that link societal and state processes of decision-making: opinion formation, interestintermediation, national executive decision-making and national parliamentary scrutiny. From a normative perspective they discuss what impacts this process of Europeanizationhas on democracy in the evolving system. They conclude that more changes are seen within the state-centric than in the societal-centred processes of democracy, thus thepublic seems to have been 'left behind? in the process of constructing Europe. The empirical research and normative discussion presented in this book are designed to further our knowledge concerning the Europeanization of social and state processes of democracy and to contribute to the continuing dialogue on democracy in the EuropeanUnion. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and international relations, as well as those interested in European studies andcomparative politics.

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.

This book examines the role of the European Court of Justice in the regulation of the internal market from a competence perspective. However, rather than focusing on the Court's role in enforcing the limits of EU competence in the EU's political decision making, it explores a related, albeit understudied, question: to what extent does the Court observe the constitutional limits of EU competence and its own institutional powers in the interpretation of EU internal market law laid down in the Treaties? The book provides an answer to this question through the analysis of EU free movement case law in light of the constitutional principles that govern the allocation of competences and powers in the EU: conferral, subsidiarity and proportionality, on the vertical level, and institutional balance, on the horizontal level. Why should the Court be bound by these principles? What do they mean when applied to judicial practice? To what extent are they observed in the free movement case law? The book argues that the Court's observance of the four principles has been inconsistent, thereby creating substantive and constitutional tensions in the EU's relationship with the Member States and upsetting the institutional balance of powers between the EU legislature and judiciary. Shortlisted for the UACES Best Book Prize 2023

The European Union is frequently accused of having a 'democratic deficit'. Many commentators argue that this could be remedied by increasing the powers of the European Parliament relative to those of the Council and the Commission. The fact that the European Parliament is the only EU institution whose members are directly elected leads to the assumption that it is also the most legitimate. The author argues that this position is based on the flawed assumption that the nature of the European citizenry is similar to those of the member states. In other words, the position assumes that the union has a demos, or a people, who are prepared to accept majority outcomes even when finding themselves in the minority. In this book the author argues that this is not the case and that the most severe dimension of the democracy problem is not procedural, but socio-psychological. The fact that the EU does not have a people means that establishing an EU-wide democracy based on analogies to domestic political systems is likely to lead to a further loss of democratic legitimacy. The EU can rely on output legitimacy in policy areas which do not require pan-European solidarity and identity and in which policy-making at EU-level increases efficiency and thereby benefits all citizens. However, policy areas which require high levels of solidarity or a common identity should either remain fully within the nation states, or be subject to intergovernmental rather than supranational decision-making at EU-level.

Completely updated and newly available in paperback, this book examines the relationship between theory and reform in the European Union in the light of the Amsterdam Treaty.

The European Union and Global Governance: A Handbook aims to analyse contemporary debates in European Studies in order to provide lessons for the development, design and normative evaluation of global governance. It brings together scholars of European studies and international relations, where much of the literature on regional and global governance is located, thereby providing interdisciplinary lessons from the study of European Union and its governance that can be used to re-evaluate processes of global governance. Each chapter examines methodological, theoretical or empirical discussions within European studies in order to draw insights for current developments in global governance.

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.