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The European Union: democratic legitimacy in a regional state?. CES Working Paper, no. 112, 2004

Schmidt, Vivien A. (2004) The European Union: democratic legitimacy in a regional state?. CES Working Paper, no. 112, 2004. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    Democratic legitimacy for the EU is problematic if it is seen as a future nation-state. If instead the EU were seen as a regional state—with shared sovereignty, variable boundaries, composite identity, compound governance, and a fragmented democracy in which the EU level assures governance for and with the people through effective governing and interest consultation, leaving to the national level government by and of the people through political participation and citizen representation—the problems of the democratic deficit diminish for the EU level. But they become even greater for the national level, where the changes to national democratic practices demand better ideas and discourses of legitimization. A further complicating factor results from problems of “institutional fit,” because the EU has had a more disruptive impact on “simple” polities, where governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than on more “compound” polities, where it has been more dispersed through multiple authorities.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > governance: EU & national level
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > legitimacy
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > Harvard University, Center for European Studies > CES Working Papers/Open Forum
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 18 Sep 2008
    Page Range: p. 18
    Last Modified: 15 Feb 2011 17:58
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9041

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