system of politicized “negotiation democracy” with mechanisms of direct participation. With a number of institutional …

and argument over the direction of the policy agenda. This aspect, which is ultimately the difference between a democracy … and an enlightened form of authoritarianism, is an essential element of even the ‘thinnest’ theories of democracy, yet is …

legitimacy. With regard to the EU, participation of civil society organisations are officially seen as a means of bridging the … gap between the EU and its citizens, as materialised in the EU-discourse of participatory democracy. On the basis of an … legitimacy of the EU and is instrumental to institutional power games of the European Commission and the European Parliament …

three critical questions concerning the OMC’s legitimacy (its relation to subsidiarity, the ‘Community Method’, and … democracy), before going on to assess the findings of recent empirical research on its effectiveness in terms of policy change …, governance, and mutual learning. I argue that both the democratic legitimacy and the practical effectiveness of existing OMC …

depoliticization. As the experience of the EU suggests, the combination of popular democracy and legitimacy is proving increasingly …Although we still celebrate the late twentieth-century ‘victory of democracy’, our understanding of what democracy …

participation constitutes the fundamental tenet of democracy; in others, democracy is closely linked to pluralism and the protection … Dutch democracy that are reflected in the democratic system? Five core principles are distinguished, each of which has been … institutionalised in various ways. The second question is: which ideas on democracy of key political thinkers of the 19th and early 20th …