In this paper, we confront some commonly held assumptions and objections with regard to the feasibility of deliberation in a transnational and plurilingual setting. To illustrate our argument, we rely on a solid set of both quantitative and qualitative data from Europolis, a transnational...

Officials within parliaments have got marginal scholarly attention. This also holds for the European Parliament (EP) which contains a considerable administration. Similar to administrative personnel within executives, parliament staff deserves attention because they may take part in decision...

This article contributes to a growing international bureaucracy literature by exploring the relationship between bureaucratic structure and administrative behaviour. The ambition of this study is twofold: First, it explores the extent to which international bureaucracies combine two inherent...

Identifying and explaining bureaucratic centre formation within government institutions – such as the European Commission (Commission) – is essential for understanding political order and the potential and limitations for public sector governance. Benefitting from a new body of interview...

Civil servants in international secretariats are exposed to numerous, crosscutting and, at times, conflicting pressures and expectations. The OECD secretariat is no different. This study reveals a fundamental ‘misfit’ between external demands and internal dynamics in the OECD secretariat. On...

This paper analyses the prominence, content and justifications of Euroscepticism as a form of EU legitimacy contestation. Support of and opposition to European integration have so far been mainly measured through the positions of political parties or citizens’ attitudes through public opinion...

In this article, we critically discuss the issues of discursive quality and democratic legitimacy in deliberative experiments taking place in a transnational and pluri-lingual setting. Our main argument is that while deliberative polls through careful scientific design and organisation may...

This paper scrutinises MacCormick’s liberal nationalism. The first issue with which he grapples is how well the post-sovereign constellation can re-configure nationalism through disposing of the exclusivist and suppressive (of regional forms of nationalism) propensities built into the...

In this paper, we critically examine question of how to link the ‘micro’ of deliberative mini-publics with the ‘macro’ of the larger democratic system. As a test case, we relate to EuroPolis, a transnational deliberative experiment that took place one week ahead of the 2009 European...

At several moments during the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012, Member State governments of the European Union concluded international agreements between themselves: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the Fiscal Compact were all agreed...