In this paper, I explore in a systematic manner the different components of the democratic legitimacy of the Union from the standpoint of deliberative democratic theory. Contrary to standard accounts, I claim that the question must be disaggregated, given that the Union has not only several...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between media coverage of EU policy-formulation and the involvement of national parliaments in these processes. The literature has variously argued that the activity of national parliaments in EU policy-formulation is unrelated to media...

In recent years, the idea that constitutional modes of government are exclusive to states has become the subject of sustained challenge. This is due to the development in regional and global sites of regulatory institutions and practices which meet criteria normally associated with...

After briefly considering the problems of political authority and democratic reform typical of formal transnational institutions, this paper offers a theory of democratization for transnational polities. Democratizing a polity such as the European Union requires two conditions to be realized...

Political science literature often claims that the participation of civil society organisations increases the democratic quality of policy-making in international governance arrangements. However, it remains unclear under what conditions such a democratic value can be achieved and how the...

The EU constitutional process has ascribed a new role to civil society not only as a partner in governance but also as a constituent of the emerging EU polity. Civil society appears in this process primarily as the structure of voice that is articulated in relation to EU governance and that...

What kind of foreign policy may be produced by an entity such as the EU – which is neither a state nor an international organisation? The efforts to build a common European foreign and security policy forces us to rethink deep seated understandings of what foreign and security policy actually...

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the identity problem of the European Union (EU). In order to do so the EU’s justifications of past and present enlargements are investigated. What kind of understanding of the EU do decisions to enlarge speak to? Given that the EU is based on more than...