Democratizing Europe

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 1-6

3. A Potemkin Democracy?

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 7-27

4. Europe’s Way of Government in the Making

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 28-49

5. The Crisis of Europe’s Independent Branch

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 50-66

6. Democratizing the Union

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 67-80

7. Conclusion

   • Antoine Vauchez

   Pages 81-82

8. Back Matter

   Pages 83-89

   PDF

Drawing from recent streams of scholarship, Democratizing Europe provides a renewed portrait of EU government that point at the enduring leading role of independent powers (the European Court, Commission and Central Bank). Vauchez suggests that we recognize this centrality and adjust our democratization strategies accordingly.

• EU
• Democratic deficit
• European Court of Justice
• European Central Bank
• Experts in Global Governance
• Supranational democracies
• democracy
• democratization
• European Union (EU)
• global governance
• governance
• government
• european union politics

"If you are interested in understanding the reasons and causes of the democratic disenchantment that is undermining the European project, Vauchez's book is a must read. He argues, in a convincing and innovative manner, that the solution is not to be sought in an increase in classic electoral legitimacy, but rather in the democratization of the functioning of the European independent institutions who are the true locus of power in the EU" - Pierre Rosanvallon, Professor, Chair in Modern and Contemporary History of Politics, Collège de France

'An important new contribution on the perennial debate over Europe's democratic deficit which takes the least likely institutional candidates for addressing it and demonstrates convincingly that the hope for improvement may lie there. Under Vauchez's inspired pen, the so-called independents come alive and become the dramatis personae of the European drama." - Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford, UK

"Vauchez makes a strong point that much of the thinking on European democracy rests on wrong premises. This book is a must-read for future studies." - Armin von Bogdandy, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

• Université Paris 1-Sorbonne, France

  Antoine Vauchez

Antoine Vauchez is CNRS Research professor at Université Paris 1-Sorbonne. He has published extensively on expertise and politics in contemporary European democracies and the EU, notably Brokering Europe: Euro-lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity (2015).

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