This paper deals with the issue of institutionalising a legal pacifistic international order. While Kant’s idea of perpetual peace serves as the point of departure, it is argued that in order to find a proper institutional arrangement one would have to look beyond the two notions found in...

In this paper we suggest a research agenda beyond the legitimation strategies of the CIDEL project (i.e. legitimation through outcomes, values and rights). The European Union has developed beyond that of international organisation and derivative democratic construct. But the step from negative...

Europeanisation and globalisation are frequently held to undermine national democracy. What are then the prospects for democracy in the multi-level constellation that makes up the contemporary European political order? The European debate has taken the question of democracy beyond the nation...

The chasm separating elite and popular opinion on the achievements and finality of European integration was never so visible as after the negative referendums on the Constitutional and the Lisbon Treaties. The public attitude prevailing in the past has been characterized as one of permissive...

European citizenship poses a theoretical challenge to the paradigmatic understanding of citizenship as congruence between nation, state, and membership rights. This challenge is addressed in this paper by focusing on ideal typical models of the EU polity. Is EU citizenship more nation-based,...

This paper presents a defence of Kant’s idea of a voluntary league of states. Kant’s proposal that rightful, or just, international relations can be achieved within the framework of such a league is often criticized for being at odds with his overall theory. Given Kant’s view on the...

This article critically examines the democratic theory that informs the German Federal Constitutional Court’s Lisbon Treaty ruling. This is needed because the ruling is ambiguous with regard to what democracy for what Union. In order to analyse the ruling we establish three models of what...