This paper provides a realist analysis of the EU's legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams' theory of legitimacy, which we term critical responsiveness. For Williams, 'Basic Legitimation Demand + Modernity = Liberalism'. Drawing on that model, we make three claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to popular sovereignty; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a 'legitimation story': a non-moralised normative account of how to shore up belief in legitimacy while steering clear of both raw domination and ideological distortions. (iii) The EU's current legitimation story draws on a tradition of popular sovereignty that sits badly with the supranational delegation and pooling of sovereign powers. We conclude by suggesting that the EU's legitimation deficit may be best addressed demoicratically, by recovering the value of popular sovereignty at the expense of a degree of state sovereignty.
The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of publication 1 Stuck on the Rubicon? The Resonance of Ideas of Demoi-cracy in Media DebatesABSTRACT: Theories of demoi-cracy have recently gained salience in the continuous debate on a legitimate democratic Euro-polity. Demoi-crats argue that multiple demoi can provide the European Union (EU) with its much sought after democratic legitimacy. This paper aims to offer an empirical contribution to the literature on the EU as a legitimate demoi-cracy. The paper analyses media debates in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France in order to identify resonance of demoi-cracy ideas. Analytical-content analysis was undertaken of legitimation statements in opinion articles in two quality newspapers per country and shows that the debates often share a similar point of departure as demoi-cratic theories. However, the evaluation of both this situation and the existing EU-structures relies on either intergovernmental or supranational democratic idea(l)s. In conclusion, the research offers little evidence of ideas of demoi-cracy resonating in these public debates on the EU's legitimacy with a few promising exceptions.
The prospect of a Brexit illustrates that the European Union’s legitimacy deficit can have far-reaching political consequences. In normative political theory, realists take a keen interest in questions of legitimacy. Building on Bernard Williams’ realist writings, I propose a two-step method of normative political theorization. Each step contains both a practice-sensitive phase and a practice-insensitive phase. First, the conceptualization of a norm should draw on conceptual resources available to agents within their historical circumstances. Second, the prescriptions that follow from this norm should take into account whether political order can be maintained. Applying this method to the European Union’s democratic deficit yields, first, based on public opinion research, the norm of European deep diversity and, second, a set of prescriptions for a demoicratic confederacy. Thereby, I demonstrate that this realist method is able to yield political theories distinct from other philosophical approaches. Moreover, I contribute a realist theory to the normative literature in European Union studies.
The European Union (EU) struggles to legitimate its rule. This realist study develops a conception of peoplehood in the EU polity, because, in contemporary Europe, 'the people' remains the sole source of political legitimacy. From a realist perspective, a conception of peoplehood should yield a coherent story why EU citizens should accept, or at least acquiesce, to EU rule. This study explores the possibility of a pluralistic conception being either multi-layered, multi-faceted or both. Taking a practice-dependent approach, I first analyse the institutional systems that structure relationships between EU citizens. I secondly propose conceptions of EU citizens' bonds of collectivity.Thirdly, I develop a novel two-tier conception of EU peoplehood in which individuals remain bound together as national peoples, while these peoples are in turn united by commercial and liberal bonds. I submit that this conception can lay the foundation for a convincing story to legitimate EU rule. | INTRODUCTIONIn February 2015, German Chancellor Merkel and French president Hollande arranged a compromise with Ukrainian president Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart Putin to contribute towards ending the war between those countries.1 External conflicts, such as the above, are not solved by patiently finding Pareto-optimal outcomes. They require taking political decisions that will entail compromising on both interests and values. Moreover, external forces, such as speculators on financial markets, have forced the European Union (EU) to take decisive and swift action. EU politics has thus extended from the domain of regulation into the world of realpolitik. 2 This type of politics entails decision-making on often salient issues.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
In the aftermath of the Euro-crisis, refugee crisis and Brexit, Europe's finalité politique once again became a topic of heated debate. Both Eurosceptic nationalists and defenders of the EU appeal to the democratic principle of popular sovereignty, but they offer conflicting interpretations. This study seeks to offer a fine-grained framework to analyze this normative conflict of sovereignty. I distinguish four conceptions of popular sovereignty in Europe's transnational polity; each is linked to a parliamentary arrangement. First, national popular sovereignty proposes a safeguarding of sovereign nationstates. Second, European popular sovereignty suggests that decision-making power should shift from the member-states to a European superstate. Third, simultaneous popular sovereignty suggests that national peoples and EU citizens should be represented in the EU. Fourth, shared popular sovereignty points toward national parliamentarians being the central locus of democratic authority in the EU. These conceptions thus result in conflicting institutional prescriptions.
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