A Democratic Audit of the European Union provides a systematic assessment of democracy in the EU against clearly defined criteria. Christopher Lord offers a double challenge to generalizations about a democratic deficit in the EU. On the one hand, it shows that standards of democratic performance in the EU may vary across Union institutions and decision-making processes. On the other hand, it shows that they can vary across key dimensions of democratic governance, including citizenship, rights, participation, representation, responsiveness, transparency and accountability.

Behind the facade of democracy are a number of unanswered questions, foremost among them how to relate democracy beyond the state especially at the EU level to democracy within the state. This important new text provides a wide-ranging assessment of the theory and practice of democracy at all levels in Europe today.

The third volume of the Dragonfly trilogy, a long novel whose action is set on three worlds colonised by humans, in a period long after life on Earth has been destroyed by war. The trilogy covers the preparation, execution and consequences of the journey of the Dragonfly, a small starboat, out from the civilised interior of the Starsphere to one of the Degenerate Worlds.