Title: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union
Abstract: Concern about the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ is misplaced. Judged against existing advanced industrial democracies, rather than an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super–majoritarian and concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. The EU’s appearance of exceptional insulation reflects the subset of functions it performs — central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration. These are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. On balance, the EU redresses rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 884
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot