Is There a European Society? Social Conditions for Democracy in the EU

  • Achim Hurrelmann
Chapter
Part of the Transformations of the State book series (TRST)

Abstract

The European Union (EU) is a union of democracies, and most observers would agree that the Member States constitute the most important fora of democratic life in Europe’s multilevel system. However, as more and more decision-making competencies are shifted away from the Member States and to the EU, and national autonomy is increasingly being curtailed by EU law, the notion that the Union can base its democratic legitimacy mainly on the legitimacy of the Member State governments becomes ever less convincing. There are hence good reasons to ask why the most important institutional principles associated with democracy in the Member States — direct election of all core legislators and full accountability of all rulers to the electorate — cannot be transferred to the EU level as well. In other words: can the EU construct institutions that would base its legitimacy on genuinely supranational democratic procedures, analogous to those known from the Member States?

Keywords

European Union Member State Gross Domestic Product European Society Public Sphere 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

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© Achim Hurrelmann 2007

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  • Achim Hurrelmann

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