Twenty years ago, in the pages of the Journal of Common Market Studies, Hedley Bull launched a searing critique of the European Community's 'civilian power' in international affairs. Since that time the increasing role of the European Union (EU) in areas of security and defence policy has led to...

The legitimacy of international institutions is a contested issue both in terms of concept formation and empirical evidence and attracts attention from across the political sciences. The present contribution posits a relational concept of legitimacy that includes self-justification of rulers on...

This paper measures the net redistributive impact of the EU budget. It finds that for every € 1,000 difference in income per capita across countries, € 9 is offset by lower contributions to the budget and € 3 is offset by higher expenditures by the budget. The overall equalising effect is...