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.

It is widely believed that the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit. This then raises a fundamental question: can democracy ever be applied to decision-making bodies beyond the nation-state? How we conceive of democracy itself is essential to how we understand its deficit, and this book, with its impressive array of highly influential contributors, presents a theoretical approach which enables us to think of democracy at a supra-national level. Bringing together the ideas of major thinkers such as Bellamy, Habermas, Joerges and Schlesinge, Democracy in the European Union presents pioneering and original work on a key issue in contemporary politics. With in-depth analysis from high-calibre writers, this book is a unique contribution to debates about democracy and the European Union, for all upper-level undergraduate and graduate students of politics, European studies, democratic studies, and international relations, as well as professionals and policy-makers.

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

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 r

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.