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Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance pp 94–116Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Quest for a European Public Sphere: News Media and Democratic Legitimacy

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Part of the book series: Transformations of the State ((TRST))

Abstract

Democratic legitimacy of political orders and political decisions depends on the consent of the governed. This almost common-sensical proposition suggests that

legitimacy requires that people have beliefs about a political order that motivate them to support that order in some way, to accept obligations towards it and to act mainly according to its rules. These beliefs and attitudes should also correspond to public opinion and be articulated in public discourse.1

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Notes

  1. B. Peters, ‘Public Discourse, Identity and the Problem of Democratic Legitimacy’, in E. O. Eriksen (ed.), Making the European Polity. Reflexive Integration in the EU (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 98.

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  20. All results will be published in B. Peters, H. Wessler, S. Sifft, M. Brüggemann and K. Kleinen-von Königslöw, The Transnationalization of Public Spheres (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, forthcoming).

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  25. For each year we sampled all newspaper articles of two randomly selected Mondays, two Tuesdays, and so on. For an account of the effectiveness of this constructed week method, see D. A. Riffe, C. F. Lacy and R. Stephen, Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research (Mahwah: L. Erlbaum, 1998).

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  28. See, for example, Kielmansegg, ‘Integration und Demokratie’; D. Grimm, ‘Does Europe Need a Constitution?’ European Law Journal, 1(3) (1995) pp. 282–302.

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Authors
  1. Hartmut Wessler
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  2. Michael Brüggemann
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  3. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw
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  4. Stefanie Sifft
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  5. Andreas Wimmel
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Carleton University, Canada

    Joan DeBardeleben (Director of the Centre for European Studies and Professor in the Institute of European and Russian Studies) & Achim Hurrelmann (Assistant Professor of Political Science) (Director of the Centre for European Studies and Professor in the Institute of European and Russian Studies) &  (Assistant Professor of Political Science)

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© 2007 Hartmut Wessler, Michael Brüggemann, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, Stefanie Sifft and Andreas Wimmel

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Wessler, H., Brüggemann, M., Königslöw, K.Kv., Sifft, S., Wimmel, A. (2007). The Quest for a European Public Sphere: News Media and Democratic Legitimacy. In: DeBardeleben, J., Hurrelmann, A. (eds) Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance. Transformations of the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591783_6

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