Inventing the Eu as a Democratic Polity: Concepts, Actors and Controversies

ISBN-13: 9783319944142 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 309 str.

Claudia Wiesner

Opis

The EU as a democratic polity has been invented: it is a product of creative and innovative actors and thinkers that conceptualized and by and by helped to realise it, from the beginning up to the present. But the concepts, ideas, and utopias of a democratic Europe differ considerably. The processes of inventing and building a democratic EU are marked by conceptual controversies in both public and academic debates. These are the resource for the present book, which focuses on the concepts, actors and controversies related to inventing the EU as a democratic polity. The chapters study exemplary long-term and detail cases related to inventing and institutionalizing the decisive elements of representative democracy in the EU-a parliament, citizens that vote for it in universal suffrage and governmental bodies that are linked to parliament in much the same way as government is in a parliamentary democracy.

Spis treści

Preface

Introduction: Inventing the EU as a democratic polity

Part I: The theoretical and methodological toolkit

1. Conceptualising representative democracy in the EU

2. Towards a reflexive perspective on political concepts

3. Studying Conceptual Change via European integration: A Research Agenda

4. Studying conceptual controversies in this book

Part II: Inventing the EU as a democratic polity

5. Inventing the EU—but as a democratic polity or as a balance of powers?

6. Towards the bases of representative democracy—parliament, citizenry, and government

7. Who did it, when, and how? Treaty changes, law implementation, and interinstitutonal micropolitics

8. A dynamic perspective on the EP´s power gains: studying interinstitutional micropolitics 

9. Inventing and shaping EU citizens

Part III: The EU as a supranational democratic polity?

10. A defective supranational democracy? Government, Parliament, Head of State in the EU system

11. Parliamentarism and the European Parliament: potentials and limits

12. European Council – Government, Parliament, President or intergovernmental assembly? 

13. Citizenship, Democracy and demos-building in the EU

Part IV: The inner market, multi-level governance and democracy

14. Capitalism, Democracy and the European Union

15. Citizenship, Social rights and democracy

16. Parliaments versus Executives in the financial crisis

Conclusion: The EU as a democratic polity?

O autorze

Claudia Wiesner is Professor for Political science at Fulda University of Applied Sciences and adjunct Professor in Political Science at Jyväskylä

University, Finland. Her main research interests lie in the comparative study of democracy, political culture and political sociology in the EU multilevel system. Wiesner´s second field of research is Public Policy, its evaluation, reform and theory.

Blurb

The EU as a democratic polity has been invented: it is a product of creative and innovative actors and thinkers that conceptualized and by and by helped to realise it, from the beginning up to the present. But the concepts, ideas, and utopias of a democratic Europe differ considerably. The processes of inventing and building a democratic EU are marked by conceptual controversies in both public and academic debates. These are the resource for the present book, which focuses on the concepts, actors and controversies related to inventing the EU as a democratic polity. The chapters study exemplary long-term and detail cases related to inventing and institutionalizing the decisive elements of representative democracy in the EU—a parliament, citizens that vote for it in universal suffrage and governmental bodies that are linked to parliament in much the same way as government is in a parliamentary democracy.

Claudia Wiesner is Professor for Political science at Fulda University of Applied Sciences and adjunct Professor in Political Science at Jyväskylä University, Finland. Her main research interests lie in the comparative study of democracy, political culture and political sociology in the EU multilevel system. Wiesner´s second field of research is Public Policy, its evaluation, reform and theory.