In order to be simultaneously effective and liberal, governments must normally be able to count on voluntary compliance - which, in turn, depends on the support of socially shared legitimacy beliefs. In Western constitutional democracies, such beliefs are derived from the distinct but coexistent...

The existence of a European public sphere, a public network of exchange of opinions and ideas on political issues, has come to be seen as a prerequisite for the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. The paper conceptualizes the Europeanization of the national public spheres as a gradual...