Legitimating the European Union: Aspirations, Inputs and Performance

ISBN-13: 9781403921086 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 233 str.

Janet Mather

Opis

Legitimating the European Union focuses on the notions of political legitimacy in the European Union. Since the early 1970s the EU has never been perceived to be as legitimate as it needed to be. Legitimizing factors, such as the elections to the European Parliament or increasing European Parliament powers have always lagged behind popular perceptions of what was needed at the time. Mather proposes that the EU suffers from a 'legitimacy deficit' and that this deficit matters (assuming the EU does not propose to be a dictatorship). The book links legitimacy theory to the way in which the EU's citizens experience and react to supranational forms of governance.

Spis treści

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Legitimacy and Legitimation in the Old Europe Adapting Legitimacy to the European Union Liberal Representative Democracy and EU Legitimacy Acting and Interacting: Participatory Democracy and EU Legitimacy A Citizens' European Union The EU's External Performance Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

O autorze

JANET MATHER is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of The European Union and British Democracy: Towards Convergence, and a number of journal articles. She has also contributed chapters to books edited by Neill Nugent, Juliet Lodge and Michael O'Neill amongst others.