Title: Saving the Union? EU Foreign Policy and the Democratic Deficit
Abstract: This chapter connects the preceding discussion about the functions of EU foreign policy with that of the democratic deficit. It does this because one important — though more contingent — function of EU foreign policy is to mitigate some of the EU's legitimacy problems, namely its 'democratic deficit'. Though foreign policy is rarely cited as an agent of internal democratization, arguments about the need for consistency between internal and external policy suggest that there is a relationship between foreign policy and the EU's internal political development. This is the suggestion of Nicolaïdis and Howse, for whom the EU's tendency towards idealistic hubris in its foreign policy can serve as a useful lightning rod for internal reform. In their words, 'the goals that the EU sets itself externally need in turn to constitute the main benchmarks for internal policies. Ultimately, the EU would need to model itself on the Utopia that it seeks to project on to the rest of the world' (2002, p. 788).
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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