Download or read book Democratic Representation in Europe written by Maurizio Cotta and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-08 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to a better understanding of relations between social and political change, and the importance of institutional factors in shaping the political elites of European democracies. It helps to substantiate theoretical debates in the social and political sciences on issues such as historical institutionalism and path dependency.
Download or read book The Challenge of Democratic Representation in the European Union written by S. Kröger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does political representation in the European Union look like? This volume argues that the transformation of representation in the EU is characterized by diversification processes, albeit with an uncertain ability to re-configure the link between representation and democracy.
Download or read book Political Representation in the European Union written by Sandra Kröger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years the financial and economic crisis of 2008–9 has progressed into an equally important political and democratic crisis of the EU. These troubled times have set the framework to re-assess a number of important questions in regard to representative democracy in the EU, such as the normative foundation of political representation, the institutional relationship between representatives and represented, the link between democracy and representation and new arenas and actors. This book examines the diverse avenues through which different sorts of actors have expressed their voices during the Euro crisis and how their various interests are translated into the decision-making process. It offers a state-of- the-art assessment of what political representation means in this context as well as a contribution to the ‘representative turn’ in democratic theory. The authors address three key themes: • The main actors and channels of political representation in the EU. • Interlocking levels of representation in the EU and the way in which national and supranational representation works. • How the European institutional system represents EU citizens through law and administration. Focusing on the importance of representation in the legitimation of democracy, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, European studies, democratic theory, representation studies, civil society and transnational democracy.
Download or read book Building Europe s Parliament written by Berthold Rittberger and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-03-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have the national governments of EU member states successively endowed the European Parliament with supervisory, budgetary, and legislative powers over the past fifty years? Building Europe's Parliament sheds new light on this pivotal issue, and provides a major contribution to the study of the European Parliament. Rittberger develops a theory of delegation to representative institutions in international politics which combines elements of democratic theory and different strands of institutionalist theory. To test the plausibility of his theory, Rittberger draws on extensive archival material and offers theory-guided, in-depth case studies of three landmark decisions in the history of the European Parliament: the creation of the Common Assembly of the ECSC in 1951 and the concomitant acquisition of supervisory powers vis-à-vis the quasi-executive High Authority; the delegation of budgetary powers following the signing of the Treaty of Luxembourg in 1970; and the delegation of legislative powers resulting from the adoption of the Single European Act signed in 1986. This is followed by the charting of more recent key developments, culminating in the adoption of the Constitutional Treaty in 2004. The book provides a welcome addition to the literature on institutional design by reflecting on the conditions under which governments opt for the creation and empowerment of parliamentary institutions in international politics. It also makes a valuable contribution to the application of democratic theory to the study of the European Union by demonstrating that political elites shared the view that the new supranational polity which emerged from the debris of World War II suffered from 'democratic deficit' since its inception, thus disproving the claim that the lamented 'democratic deficit' is a recent phenomenon.
Download or read book Representation and Democracy in the EU written by Richard Bellamy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the various ways in which citizens are represented in EU policy-making. Most accounts naturally focus on the European Parliament as the prime source of democratic representation. This collection focuses instead on four other channels that are as and often more important: namely, representation via governments, national parliaments, civil society organisations and directly, via referenda. Based on original research, the book combines democratic theory with detailed empirical analysis to provide an innovative, timely and up-to-date evaluation of the nature of representation in the EU. Policy advisors, practitioners and those scholars interested in democracy and the European Union will find this volume to be a valuable resource. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.
Download or read book The Strain of Representation written by Robert Rohrschneider and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strain of Representation examines the quality of democratic representation in Europe, focusing on the way that political parties channel the preferences of different groups of citizens into government policies.
Download or read book Democratic Representation in Multi level Systems written by Thomas Däubler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive volume studies the vices and virtues of regionalisation in comparative perspective, including countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK, and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. It follows the entire chain of democratic responsiveness, starting from the translation of citizen preferences into voting behaviour, up to patterns of decision-making and policy implementation. Many European democracies have experienced considerable decentralisation over the past few decades. This book explores the key virtues which may accompany this trend, such as regional-level political authorities performing better in understanding and implementing citizens’ preferences. It also examines how, on the other hand, decentralisation can come at a price, especially since the resulting multi-level structures may create several new obstacles to democratic representation, including information, responsibility and accountability problems. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal West European Politics.
Download or read book Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union written by Hermann Schmitt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How severe a problem is what may be called the democratic deficit of the European Union? This volume elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit.
Download or read book The Representative Turn in EU Studies written by Sandra Kröger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the participative and deliberative turns in both democratic theory and EU studies, we are currently witnessing a ‘representative turn’ to which this volume contributes by addressing the relation between representation and democracy in the EU. Although in the Lisbon Treaty the EU conceives itself as a representative democracy, the meaning of this concept in a supranational polity is far from clear – either in theory or practice. Instead, the historically contingent link between representation and democracy is today severely challenged by various processes of diversification at all levels of political action (national, regional, supranational). These processes challenge our understanding of representative democracy as involving electoral democracy within clearly delineated nation-states, provoking a situation in which ‘new frontiers’ of representation develop. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide normative standards as well as accurate assessments of democratic representation in the EU. This volume addresses these core challenges of representative democracy in the EU from normative, theoretical and methodological perspectives. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
Download or read book Political Representation and European Union Governance written by Peter Mair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book confronts and discusses different conceptions of political representation with respect to their application to the system of multi-level governance in the European Union. Political representation is an essentially contested concept. Its meaning has evolved with the development of representative democracy at the level of the nation state, and normative theories of political representation often evolved as a reflection on developing practices rather than the other way around. Since the EU is not a conventional nation state, and since the effectiveness and legitimacy of classic notions of political representation at the level of the national state has also become a matter of dispute, the EU has become a playground for the development of alternative or additional conceptions of democracy. The contributions to this volume evaluate these alternative conceptions with regard to both their effectiveness and their legitimacy, and combine both conceptual and empirical analyses. This book was based on a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.
Download or read book The Crisis of Representation in Europe written by Jack Hayward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1994 European Elections focused public attention on the perception that representatives put integration above public interest. The contributors here critically assess the diagnosis of the ailment and the solutions that have been canvassed to remedy its causes and consequences.
Download or read book European E Democracy in Practice written by Leonhard Hennen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-06 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores how digital tools and social media technologies can contribute to better participation and involvement of EU citizens in European politics. By analyzing selected representative e-participation projects at the local, national and European governmental levels, it identifies the preconditions, best practices and shortcomings of e-participation practices in connection with EU decision-making procedures and institutions. The book features case studies on parliamentary monitoring, e-voting practices, and e-publics, and offers recommendations for improving the integration of e-democracy in European politics and governance. Accordingly, it will appeal to scholars as well as practitioners interested in identifying suitable e-participation tools for European institutions and thus helps to reduce the EU’s current democratic deficit. This book is a continuation of the book “Electronic Democracy in Europe” published by Springer.
Download or read book Democracy and the Information Society in Europe written by and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2000 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to make the case for giving everyone the possibility of participating in the development of a European vision of democracy in the age of the information society. It asks what impact the new media are having on politics and representative democracy, and looks at the growing relationship between politics and the media and the new links between democracy and representation. It also examines the effect of technological development on the broadening of the political arena and the new ways of exercising political responsibility. The possibility that everyone can be consulted about everything, with traditional forms of democratic representation being challenged by the new power of the media, is considered with its profound implications, including the development of novel methods of organizing and regulating political life.
Download or read book Clientelism Interests and Democratic Representation written by Simona Piattoni and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-09-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the evolution of clientelist practices in several western European countries. Through the historical and comparative analysis of countries as diverse as Sweden and Greece, England and Spain, France and Italy, Iceland and the Netherlands, the authors study both the "supply-side" and the "demand-side" of clientelism. This approach contends that clientelism is a particular mix of particularism and universalism, in which interests are aggregated at the level of the individual and his family "particularism," but in which all interests can potentially find expression and accommodation in "universalism."
Download or read book How Europeans View and Evaluate Democracy written by Monica Ferrin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a new data-set covering 29 European and neighboring countries, this volume shows how, Europeans view and evaluate democracy: what are their conceptions of democracy, how do they assess the quality of democracy in their own country, and to what extent do they consider their country's democracy as legitimate? The study shows that Europeans share a common view of liberal democracy, which is complemented by elements of social and direct democracy, which go beyond the basic liberal model. The level of their demands in terms of democracy varies, however, considerably across Europe and is related to their assessment of democracy: the worse the quality of democracy in a given country, the higher the respective demands on democracy. The analysis of the determinants of democratic views and evaluations shows that they depend on the political and economic (but less on the cultural) context conditions. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Universite libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.
Download or read book Achieving Democracy Through Interest Representation written by Patrycja Rozbicka and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-24 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the quality of democracy through the study of organized interests in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since the collapse of communism in 1989 up to 2017. It offers a much-needed comprehensive look into formal interest representation in CEE countries and compares this with the model in Western democracies. Drawing on democratic theory and comparative analysis, the authors explore the effects of a legal framework, political as well as social contexts. The volume contributes to debates on the performance of young democracies in CEE, where scholars argue that there is a ‘democratic crisis’ and democratic fatigue while the interest group system is often labelled as weak and, in some cases, underdeveloped. Although great efforts have been made to deepen our understanding of interest organization and lobbying tools, the current literature fails to provide a comprehensive answer on the influence of unsupportive environments on population ecology. The case of CEE countries shows significant effects of political and social contexts on interest representation, stimulating a debate about the quality of democratic institutions following the collapse of communism.
Download or read book People and Parliament in the European Union written by Jean Blondel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of the European Parliament has been steadily and visibly increasing, but the already low rate of turnout in European elections has declined. This text analyzes these concepts of applicability at the European level.
