Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 402
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7425-5491-7 • Hardback • April 2007 • $143.00 • (£110.00)
978-0-7425-5492-4 • Paperback • April 2007 • $75.00 • (£58.00)
978-0-7425-7640-7 • eBook • April 2007 • $71.00 • (£55.00)
Beate Kohler-Koch holds the Jean Monnet Chair for European Integration at the University of Mannheim. Berthold Rittberger is chair of political science and contemporary history at the University of Mannheim.
Chapter 1: Charting Crowded Territory: Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union
Part I: Democracy: The Constitutional Principle of the EU
Chapter 2: A Disputed Idea Becomes Law: Remarks on European Democracy as a Legal Principle
Part II: What Future for Parliamentary Democracy in the EU?
Chapter 3: Expanding National Parliamentary Control: Does it Enhance European Democracy?
Chapter 4: The European Parliament between Policy-Making and Control
Chapter 5: Constructing Parliamentary Democracy in the European Union: How Did It Happen?
Chapter 6: Parliamentary Representation in a Decentred Polity
Part III: The Public Sphere and Civil Society: Pre-Requisites for Democratically Legitimate Rule-Making
Chapter 7: Pre-Requisites of Transnational Democracy and Mechanisms of Sustaining it: The Case of the European Union
Chapter 8: The Europeanization of Protest: A Typology and Empirical Evidence
Part IV: Democracy and Political Participation
Chapter 9: Participatory Governance and European Democracy
Chapter 10: Some Considerations on Participation in Participatory Governance
Chapter 11: The Organization of Interests and Democracy in the European Union
Part V: Deliberative Democracy
Chapter 12: The Euro-Polity in Perspective: Some Normative Lessons from Deliberative Democracy
Chapter 13: Reconceptualizing the Supremacy of European Law: A Plea for a Supranational Conflict of Laws
A stellar book on the major debates on democratic legitimacy in the European Union. It is a 'must-read' for all those concerned about the democratic deficit in the EU and who are asking: Does it exist? How does it manifest itself? Can it be fixed? The contributors constitute an impressive lineup of scholars, including most of 'the great and the good' on democracy in the EU.
— Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
This book provides a much needed, very thorough overview of an extremely complex field of research on European integration, made even more complex by the intricate interdependence between normative political theory and empirical research. It stands out in the 'legitimacy-deficit literature' as being both remarkably even-handed and academically sophisticated. In addition to including thorough reviews of the current state of the discipline, the collection provides constructive indications of how to reduce the present democratic deficits, by fine tuning the workings of national parliaments and the European Parliament, or by correcting some of the weaknesses of 'network governance.'
— Andreas Føllesdal, University of Oslo