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Democracy and an Open-Economy World Order pp 209–222Cite as

The Long Road to a Democratic Networked European Union

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Abstract

The chapter offers a critical appraisal of the perspectives over European integration in terms of new governance and particularly networks. This specific case of regional integration has anyway raised intriguing issues, regarding the content and role of democracy, legitimacy, accountability and representation. The road leading to a networked European entity or a networked democracy might still be long, although networked processes or functions have already entailed serious consequences, both practically and normatively. Consequently, democracy appears to be the inevitable—albeit complex—guide during the respective course. In this framework, it is imperative to distinguish between the recognition of the feasibility per se of a post-majoritarian or post-liberal democracy and the correspondence of the emerging European realities to the relevant criteria. Simply put, the current literature tends to emphasize the challenges that the EU poses for political theory or organization as well as for (representative) democracy. This needs not to be refuted, but it still needs to be analyzed dialectically with the fact that democracy itself (however complex or even ambiguous) sets challenges, not to be taken lightly, for the emergence of the euro-polity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia Street, Thessaloniki, 54636, Greece

    Kyriakos Mikelis

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  1. Kyriakos Mikelis
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Correspondence to Kyriakos Mikelis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece

    George C. Bitros

  2. Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece

    Nicholas C. Kyriazis

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Mikelis, K. (2017). The Long Road to a Democratic Networked European Union. In: Bitros, G., Kyriazis, N. (eds) Democracy and an Open-Economy World Order. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52168-8_13

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