EU Legitimacy

The most important current issue for both the European Union and Member States is the economic crisis and its implications for the future of the EU. Citizens across Member States of the EU, whether affected or not by the debt crisis and austerity measures, are progressively losing trust in their national governments. The political impact is profound: untimely end of governments, re-structuring of party landscapes, unpredicted and unpredictable electoral results, mass protests – are but a few examples.  Overall, citizens across the EU are increasingly sceptical of the EU’s ability to work out efficient mechanisms to deal with the worst crisis since the Union’s inception.
The overarching theoretical question is to what extent representation is tied to the EU(-ro) crisis/ failure. What types of representation/ democracy should the EU be focusing on? Closely linked to this lies the recurring question of the democratic legitimacy of the EU in light of the so-called “democratic deficit(s)” , the policymaking power of an unelected (technocratic) bureaucracy, its concomitant elitism and abstract detachment from regional concerns.
The volume will engage broadly in addressing the tensions created between national vs. EU level of government and the resulting issues, while not neglecting an EU perspective on the matter. The volume is not designed to address questions related to Eurozone countries only but the entire of the EU.
Thus, the essays in this collection intend to explore issues pertaining to democratic legitimization in European politics intrinsically woven together: the monetary union and the debt crisis/ economic growth, constitutionalism, European integration (and disintegration), European federalism vs regionalism, Euroscepticism and the British question, the limits of political participation and active citizenship, EU and Globalization.
It is important to emphasize that the volume is expected to address the various concerns/problems/pathologies threatening the future of the EU, not only on the basis of contemporary contingencies and temporary factors, but also those affecting its future development and growth.


List of Contents:
Preface, Introduction
The EU: An Ever deeper Democratic Deficit? Reconsidering Democratic Legitimacy
Kyriakos Demetriou, University of Cyprus

1 EU Democratic Deficit(s) and Legitimacy; System vs Sub-System Level
Alexander Katsaitis, School of Public Policy, University College London

2 Suspending democracy? The role of unelected bodies in the governance of the EU economic crisis. Diego Gionnone, Department of Political Sciences “Jean Monnet” of the Second University of Naples (Italy)

3 Pushing the Union forward? The role of the European Parliament in the Union crisis Fernanda Neutel- Department of Political Science and International Relations- University Lusófona- Lisbon

4 Economy and monetary union:
Mark Baimbridge, University of Bradford, UK

5 Foreign and Defence Policy and Legitimacy
Nicola Chelotti, University College London, Dept of Political Science, n.chelotti@ucl.ac.uk
6 Britain and Europe: a model of permanent crisis?
Simon Usherwood, University of Surrey, s.usherwood@surrey.ac.uk

7 Divided Europe? Euroscepticism in East Central and Southern Europe
José M. Magone,  Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin, jose.magone@hwr-berlin.de

8 Defeating Nationalism in Europe: Voting mechanisms for highly integrated economics
Gerhard Hanappi, University of Technology Vienna, hanappi@econ.tuwien.ac.at

9 The Brussels volcano- Toward post-national political Behaviors in the European Public Sphere?  Xavier Carpentier-Tanguy, Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe, Luxembourg, xavier.carpentier-tanguy@cvce.eu

10 The ‘reluctant hegemon’: Germany in the EU’s post-crisis constellation
Christian Schweiger, Durham University; christian.schweiger@durham.ac.uk

11 European Union in the globalized world
Fritz Breuss, Jean Monnet Professor für wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Europäischen Integration, Wien (Vienna University of Economics and Business)

12 Review essay of Habermas’ Zur Verfassung Europas: Ein Essay (2011) Review essay of Habermas’ Zur Verfassung Europas: Ein Essay (2011)
Gulshan Khan, Gulshan.Khan@nottingham.ac.uk

The Urban Agenda for the European Union (UAEU) introduces a new stakeholder mechanism for transnational cooperation on sustainable development. Whilst planners welcome this ‘soft’ urban approach to EU policy, globalisation critics warn of network governance impairing the ‘rights to the city’. Indeed, the experi­ence of EU regional policy cautions promises of subnational parti­cipation and proposes differentiated institutional effects of political mobilisation. So, how can the urban mechanisms now contribute to European governance? Conceptualising the UAEU as an evolving political field highlights both the potentials and
limitations of governing diversity, thus contributing to the demo­cratic politicisation of transnational urban governance.

This article presents a rational reconstruction of the practice of constitutional politics in supranational polities. In doing so, it seeks to refocus the ongoing debate about constituent power in the EU on the question of who, under what conditions, is entitled to decide on the EU constitutional order. The analysis leads to a number of principles of democratic legitimacy , which include the political autonomy of the members of the state demoi as well as the political autonomy of the members of a cross-border demos. In explicating these parallel entitlements to political autonomy, I provide a systematic justification for the notion of a pouvoir constituant mixte, according to which the citizens should take control of EU constitutional politics in two roles – as European citizens and as Member State citizens.