'Constitutionalisation' is the key concept in the search for legitimate governance in the European Union and in the international system. This paper suggests revitalising of a discipline which is widely neglected in European law and international law scholarship. It does not, however, recommend...

Understanding the consequences, for states and citizens, of making policy on the EU level is central to the reception of the European project and questions of democracy in the EU. This analysis places EU policy-making, trade policy in particular, in the context of bureaucratic power literature...

This chapter 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...

This working paper offers a reconstruction and critical analysis of Joerges’ conflicts theory of European Union law. It is claimed that the theory of European conflicts is structured around three key premises: first, that there are functional and normative reasons to transcend the autarchic...

This paper aims at putting forward the key elements of a constitutional theory of European law on the basis of D. Neil MacCormick’s theory of European constitutional pluralism. Firstly, I consider how the institutional theory of law fleshed out by MacCormick creates the theoretical space...

With the White Paper on European Governance (2001) the European Commission has introduced a new approach to European policy-making and civil society making public consultations an essential tool for improving governance and policy outputs. The present study seeks to explore the role of online...

In this paper, we apply a revised version of the discourse quality index (DQI) developed by Steenbergen et al. on European Parliament debates in an attempt to evaluate the democratic quality of representation at the EU level. This updated measurement instrument, after the inclusion of new...

The gendered nature of democratic decision-making in the EU is the focus of this paper. It outlines a theoretical model of democracy that looks at public decision-making processes through a gender lens: gender democracy. It then takes two instances of democratic decision-making in the European...