Europe's 'political space,' its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the...

Europäisierungsprozesse werden vielfach als Bedrohung wahrgenommen. Weil das spezifisch "europäische" am Transformationsprozess von Staatlichkeit nicht so richtig zu fassen ist, bleibt als Ausweg nur die Argumentation mit dem Staat. So auch im Lissabon-Urteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, das...

European social policy has two central dimensions: the relation between liberalized market freedoms and social protection, on the one hand, and the distribution of regulatory competencies between the supranational and the national level on the other. The posted workers issue, i.e. the question...

Eine wachsende Zahl empirischer Arbeiten hat inzwischen gezeigt, dass der politische Integrationsprozess der Europäischen Union zwar von einer zunehmenden Europäisierung nationaler Öffentlichkeiten begleitet ist, die darüber erzeugte europäische Öffentlichkeit aber national segmentiert...

Judge-made law has played a crucial role in the process of European integration. In the vertical dimension, it has greatly reduced the range of autonomous policy choices in the member states, and it has helped to expand the reach of European competences. At the same time, however, "Integration...

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 function of legitimacy is to ensure voluntary compliance with unwelcome exercises of governing authority. Since practically all European law needs to be implemented and enforced by the governments and courts of the member states, the EU does not have to face its citizens directly. It follows...