Economic globalisation fosters transnational systems of governance that are seen to threaten nationally based systems of democracy. These developments raise several questions, both of a theoretical and of an empirical nature. First, what are the prospects for democratising transnational...

It belongs to the conventional wisdom that national parliaments have increasingly lost in overall importance due to the evolution of the EU’s political system. By passing subsequent Treaty amendments and revisions they accepted shifts of competencies to the European level,which reduced their...

This study offers an organisation theory approach arguing that the differentiated organisatational constellation of the European Union contributes to a differentiated penetration of domestic government decision-making processes. It is argued that the European Commission mainly activates the...

What kind of democracy does the EU require and what model of deliberative democracy can account for post-national legitimacy? The author contends that democracy can only prevail with egalitarian procedures of law making in place through which the citizens can influence the laws that affect them....

Over the last three decades many public sector reforms have aimed at giving administrative agencies and non-majoritarian institutions more autonomy from majority-based institutions and common sets of rules. The detachment-from-politics trend has implications for the public sector’s core...

This paper explores how and to what extent it is possible to contribute to the Democratisation of the European political order by means of modifying the ways in which taxes are deliberated upon, decided and collected in the old continent. In the first part, the author elucidates the particular...

This chapter covers the Nordic member states Denmark, Finland and Sweden, as well as the “associated” countries Norway and Iceland, although the latter are not formal members of the EU. It follows the general template by presenting the history and politics of the European issue in these...

Både i Norge, i mange andre land, i den Europeiske Union og fra internasjonale organisasjoner som OECD, er det gitt uttrykk for et stort behov for mer innovasjon og en helhetlig innovasjonspolitikk. Dette notatet, som slutter seg til forestillingen om at det er behov for en bedre forståelse av...

In 1997, Finland presented a major foreign policy initiative labelled the ‘Northern Dimension’ (ND) that was quickly included as a part of the EU’s external relations. Many analysts seem to argue that the EU’s foreign policy is a big power concert where intergovernmental bargaining...