Legitimacy and the European Union - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415181887 ISBN 13: 9780415181884

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

Synopsis

Since the Maastricht ratification debate of the early 1990s, the legitimacy of the European Union has become a subject of controversy. With unprecedented force, Europeans have begun to question the need for deeper integration. Some fear threats to established national identities, while others perceive the emergence of a distant but powerful Brussels, beyond the reach of democratic control. Legitimacy and the European Union breaks with established approaches to the problem of the legitimacy of the European Union by focusing on the recent trend towards reconceptualization of the EU not as a superstate or an organization of states, but as a multi-level, contested polity without precedent. The book examines the implications of this reconceptualization for the problem of legitimacy. Individual chapters focus on policy areas, institutions and identity politics. Taken together, they reach two main conclusions. While Europeans do not strongly identify with the EU, they increasingly recognize it as a framework for politics alongside existing national and subnational structures. And while the EU lacks central democratic institutions, the integration process has spawned significant informal and pluralist forms of representation. Rethinking recognition and representation ouside the context of the nation state points to important, if little understood, actual and potential sources of EU legitimacy.

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Review

..."the book is a worthy addition to the literature. It could be useful for graduate classes in international relations in general and the EU and European politics in particular, adding as it does a strong argument for alternative ways of viewing the EU and non-state forms of governance.."
-Richard Robyn "National Identities

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0415181887
• ISBN 13: 9780415181884
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 236
• Editor: Banchoff Thomas, Smith Mitchell