Download or read book How to Democratize the European Union and why Bother written by Philippe C. Schmitter and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contradictory creation indeed, the European Union has most of the institutions of a modern democracy, yet it does not function as one. Moreover, its growing scope of activity and supranational decision making processes are undermining the legitimacy of democracy in its member states. Much has been written about this double "democratic deficit," but surprisingly little thought has been given to what to do about it--short of drafting and ratifying a new federal constitution. In this provocative book, Philippe C. Schmitter explores both the possibility and the desirability of democratizing the EU. He argues that as a "non-state" and a "non nation" it will have to invent new forms of citizenship, representation, and decisionmaking if it is ever to democratize itself. The author also contends that the timing and political context work against a full-scale constitutionalization of the process. He proposes a number of modest (and some less modest) reforms that could improve the situation in the near future and eventually lead to a genuine Euro-democracy.
Download or read book Democratizing the European Union written by Catherine Hoskyns and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union's "democratic deficit" and ways that might be found to resolve it are hot issues in both academic debate and practical politics. Democratizing the European Union offers a fresh approach to this subject by bringing together a diverse range of authors who have been actively involved either in analyzing the activities of the European Union or participating in them.The contributors go beyond a primarily institutional approach by highlighting issues having to do with values, participation, and exclusion. Collectively this volume also transcends the limitations of abstract theory. Embracing a range of perspectives, and including discussions of major contemporary challenges, such as enlargement and economic and monetary union, this book contains a detailed analysis of the response of New Labour to the democratization debate. The contributions include: Sue Cohen, "Social Solidarity in the Delors Period"; Sverker Gustavsson, "Reconciling Suprastatism and Accountability: A View from Sweden"; Stefano Fella, "A Europe of the Peoples? New Labour and Democratizing the EU"; John Lambert and Catherine Hoskyns, "How Democratic is the European Parliament?"; Valerio Lintner, "Controlling Monetary Union"; Mary Kaldor, "Eastern Enlargement and Democracy"; Richard Kuper, "Democratization: A Constitutionalizing Process"; and Catherine Hoskyns, "Democratizing the EU: Evidence and Argument."Democratizing the European Union is essential reading for all those with an interest in the EU and broader questions of democracy. It is also particularly useful for students of European Studies and practitioners involved in EU policymaking and lobbying.
Download or read book How to Democratize Europe written by Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union has long suffered from a lack of democratic accountability. In the past decade, the problem has become particularly acute in the economic management of the Eurozone, the 19 countries of the E.U. that use the Euro (nine members don't). At present, the central institution for management of the Eurozone is the Eurogroup, an informal body led by national finance ministers who report neither to the European Parliament nor to national parliaments but coordinate their activities with the Troika, that is, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Council. Critics accuse the Eurogroup both of lack of transparency and of consistently putting the interests of the rich northwest ahead of the interests of poorer and smaller nations in the east and south. In How to Democratize Europe, four distinguished French scholars describe the diverse problems of the Eurozone and propose a treaty that would establish a parliament for economic policy consisting of selected members of national parliaments. Various contributors then respond to the proposal with support, criticism, or ideas for alternatives.--
Download or read book Democratic Empowerment in the European Union written by David Levi-Faur and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at democratic empowerment via institutional designs that extend the political rights of European citizens. It focuses on three themes: first, the positive and negative effects of the European Union institutional design on the political rights of its citizens; second, challenges for democratic regimes across the world in the 21st century in the context of regionalism and globalization; third, the constraints of neoliberalism and capitalist markets on the ability of citizens to effectively achieve their political rights within the Union.
Download or read book The Unfinished Democratization of Europe written by Erik O. Eriksen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widening and deepening of the European Union have brought to the fore the question of democracy at the European level. The system of domination already in place at the European level requires and aspires to direct legitimation - from the citizens themselves and not merely indirect, derived from the Member Nation States. Such can only be achieved by making the EU into a democratic polity. But can democracy be disassociated from its putative nation-state foundation? A revised concept of democratic legitimacy based on discourse theory is developed. It is argued that post-national democracy requires a constitution but not necessarily a state. The Union amounts to less than a state but more than an international organisation and a system of transnational governance. In the political theory of the multilevel constellation that makes up the EU, it is conceived of as a regional subset of an emerging cosmopolitan order. The EU is a state-less government. As it is not premised on group identity, it is able to accommodate a high measure of variance with regard to territory and function. The book analyzes the reforms undertaken to bring the EU 'closer to the citizens'. It documents elements of democratization and reduction of arbitrary power. However, democracy requires that the citizens can approve or reject the laws they are subjected to. Since the institutional as well as the civic conditions under which a public justification process would be deemed legitimate are not in place, European post-national democracy remains an unaccomplished mission.
Download or read book The European Union and the Promotion of Democracy written by Richard Youngs and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-01-03 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses European Union policies aimed at encouraging democratization in East Asia and the North African and Middle Eastern States within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - these two regions being the source of some of the strongest conceptual challenges to 'Western' liberal democracy since the end of the cold war. The book addresses theoretical debates over the international dimensions of political change and the EU's characteristics as an international actor. The factors both driving and inhibiting European democracy promotion policies are explored. The book outlines the EU's distinctive bottom-up philosophy, aimed at constructing the socio-economic and ideational foundations for political liberalization, but argues that the EU has in practice failed to develop a fully comprehensive and coherent democracy promotion strategy.
Download or read book Democracy in the European Union written by Alex Warleigh and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2003-04-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book comprehensively reviews one of the most salient, ongoing debates at the heart of the European Union (EU) today: democratic reform.
Download or read book The European Union Democratization written by Paul Kubicek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union has been a key actor in promoting democratization and providing assistance to encourage political change. This book assesses the EU's contribution to democratization by looking at the failures and states that offered resistance to EU pressure to reform, aiming to understand how the EU overcame or failed to overcome the numerous barriers blocking democratic progress. The book features studies on Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Ukraine, Morocco and Latvia.
Download or read book Social Democracy and the Challenge of European Union written by Robert Ladrech and published by Lynne Rienner Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He also explores what this new form of political activity means for European politics, arguing that the traditional positions of left and right may be becoming increasingly significant within the EU's evolving, transnational political culture.
Download or read book Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union written by Beate Kohler-Koch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recoge: 1. Democracy. -- 2. What future for parliamentary democracy in the EU. -- 3. The public sphere and civil society: prerequisites for democratically legitimate rule making. -- 4. Democracy and political participation. -- 5. Deliberative democracy.
Download or read book Democracy in Europe written by Vivien A. Schmidt and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-10-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in Europe is about the impact of European integration on national democracies. It argues that the oft-cited democratic deficit is indeed a problem, but not so much at the level of the European Union per se as at the national level. This is because national leaders and publics have yet to come to terms with the institutional impact of the EU on the traditional workings of their national democracies. The book begins with a discussion of what the EU is-a new form of 'regional state' in which sovereignty is shared, boundaries are variable, identity composite, and democracy fragmented. It then goes on to examine the effects of this on EU member-states' institutions and ideas about democracy, finding that institutional 'fit' matters. The 'compound' EU, in which governing activity is highly dispersed among multiple authorities, is more disruptive to 'simple' polities like Britain and France, where governing activity has traditionally been more concentrated in a single authority, than to similarly 'compound' polities like Germany and Italy. But the book concludes that the real problem for member-states is not so much that their practices have changed as that national ideas and discourse about democracy have not. The failure has been one of the 'communicative' discourse to the general public-which again has been more pronounced for simple polities, despite their potentially greater capacity to communicate through a single voice, than for compound polities, where the 'coordinative' discourse among policy actors predominates.
Download or read book Democracy in the European Union written by Professor A J F Warleigh-Lack and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2003-03-18 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `This is a most welcome contribution to current discourses on democratising the European polity. Warleigh′s thought-provoking analysis, by drawing from a rich spectrum of normative theorizing and empirical sources, produces sharp insights and a valuable reference tool for anyone interested in the governance and polity of Europe′ - Dimitris N Chryssochoou, University of Exeter `Warleigh′s theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich inquisition of the nature and evolution of democratic reform in the European Union will be an important addition to the literature. This book is neither euro-sceptic nor EU-friendly. It is a challenging call to all interested parties - citizens and scholars - to take seriously the question of investing EU institutions and procedures with more than just a surface veneer of democracy′ - Jo Shaw, Professor of European Law, University of Manchester This book comprehensively reviews one of the most salient, ongoing debates at the heart of the European Union (EU) today: democratic reform. It provides a thorough evaluation of how democracy might best be defined in the transnational context of the EU and explores the key strategies that have been deployed to enhance the Union′s democracy from the Single European Act to the present day. In considering why the strategies have been unsuccessful, Alex Warleigh contends that the EU can only democratize itself by abandoning federalism, and working towards a more participatory democracy based on flexibility and active European citizenship. The book therefore advances important new ways in which the EU′s `democratic deficit′ problems might be addressed more effectively than in the past. Marking a significant contribution to this key on-going debate, Democracy in the European Union: Theory, Practice and Reform will be essential reading for all students, scholars and professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the nature of the EU and the reform challenges it faces into the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Democracy in the European Union written by Erik Oddvar Eriksen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union is widely held to suffer from a democratic deficit, and this raises a wider question: can democracy at all be applied to decision-making bodies beyond the nation state? Today, the EU is a highly complex entity undergoing profound changes. This book asks how the type of cooperation that the EU is based on can be explained; what are the integrative forces in the EU and how can integration at a supra-national level come about? The key thinkers represented in this volume stress that in order to understand integration beyond the nation state, we need new explanatory categories associated with deliberation because a supranational entity as the EU posesses far weaker and less well-developed means of coercion - bargaining resources - than do states. The most appropriate term to denote this is the notion of 'deliberative supranationalism'. This pioneering work, headed by major writers such as Habermas, Schlesinger and Bellamy, brings a new perspective to this key issue in contemporary politics and political theory.
Download or read book The European Union and the Promotion of Democracy written by Richard Youngs and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses European Union policies aimed at encouraging democratization in East Asia and the North African and Middle Eastern States within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - these two regions being the source of some of the strongest conceptual challenges to 'Western' liberaldemocracy since the end of the cold war. The book addresses theoretical debates over the international dimensions of political change and the EU's characteristics as an international actor. The factors both driving and inhibiting European democracy promotion policies are explored. The book outlinesthe EU's distinctive bottom-up philosophy, aimed at constructing the socio-economic and ideational foundations for political liberalization, but argues that the EU has in practice failed to develop a fully comprehensive and coherent democracy promotion strategy.
Download or read book Democracy Legitimacy and the European Union written by Christer Karlsson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the democratic status of the EU political system and the Union's alleged legitimacy crisis. It also examines six different positions on how to address the EU's democratic deficit. Three of these defend the status quo, while the others are calling for democratisation. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of these positions, this book contributes to our understanding of whether it is possible and desirable to democratise the European Union.
Download or read book Direct Democracy in the EU written by Steven Blockmans and published by Centre for European Policy Studies. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the two-pronged question of how the relationship between citizens, the state and EU institutions has changed, and how direct democratic participation can be improved in a multi-layered Union.
Download or read book Democratizing Europe written by A. Vauchez and published by Palgrave Pivot. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from recent streams of scholarship, Democratizing Europe provides a renewed portrait of EU government that point at the enduring leading role of independent powers (the European Court, Commission and Central Bank). Vauchez suggests that we recognize this centrality and adjust our democratization strategies accordingly.
