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Defence date: 29 June 2015 ; Examining Board: Professor Rainer Bauböck, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Philippe Van Parijs, UC Louvain (Co-supervisor); Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI; Professor Nadia Urbinati, Columbia University. ; This dissertation aims to arrive at a model of democratic legitimacy for the European Union. There is, however, a strain of thought pre-dominant in political theory since the nineteenth century that doubts the capacity of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres to have sustainable democratic systems. This view is referred to here as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). It states that, in the absence of a common language for political debate, democracy cannot function well in the long-term as citizens existing in distinctive public spheres will inevitably come to have diverging preferences that cannot be satisfactorily resolved by a collective democratic process. Poor quality democratic institutions, as well as acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession) so that state and society become more congruent, are predicted by this thesis. To arrive at a model of democratic legitimacy for the EU, in light of the challenge presented by the LFT, three major steps are taken. Part One attempts to arrive at an account of democratic legitimacy as a realistic ideal for modern political systems. Understanding democracy as a system which strives to maximise citizens' equal opportunities for control over the decisions to which they are subject, the maximisation of electoral and direct voting opportunities for citizens is recommended, subject to certain practical constraints. Importantly, democratically legitimate institutions are identified as having important external effects, which amount to more than just the peaceful resolution of conflict. Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of demos-formation. In the second part of this dissertation, an effort is made to both classify and normatively assess the EU. As a political system the EU is taken to be a demoi-cracy, or a democracy of democracies, whereby the demoi of the member states take sovereign precedence over the European demos constituting the citizens of Europe as a whole. While citizen's control over their respective governments' roles in EU decision-making is seen to have significant shortfalls, the major democratic deficiencies are detected in citizens' control over actors located exclusively at the European level. Overall, the absence of voting opportunities directly connecting citizens to European power ensures that the EU is not controlled by its citizens in a way that is commensurate with the power it wields. If the EU is to democratise, it must be capable of dealing with the dynamics predicted by the LFT. Part Three of this dissertation analyses the sustainability of democracy in two political systems that bear striking resemblances to the EU, namely Belgium and Switzerland. Like the EU, these are multilevel and multilingual political systems attempting to organise themselves in a democratic fashion. Belgium proves to be a near perfect case for corroborating the LFT, its linguistic communities finding it increasingly difficult to coexist in one democratic community. Switzerland, by contrast, has managed to produce one of the most democratically legitimate political systems in the modern world, despite being fractured into linguistically distinct public spheres. As my conception of centripetal democracy predicts, however, the Swiss success in integrating the public spheres within one political system is in no small part related to the arrangement of its democratic institutions. That being said, there are certain conditions that made the development of centrifugal forces more likely and centripetal democracy less likely in Belgium than in Switzerland. In Part Four, where I finally derive a model of democratic legitimacy for the EU, it is demonstrated that while many of the conditions that made centrifugal forces so strong in Belgium are not (or not yet) present in the EU, the conditions for the development of a legitimate democratic process are also generally lacking. This is especially true when it comes to the introduction of direct democracy at Union level, although there may be fewer obstacles to making European institutions more electorally accountable.

Central to Philippe Van Parijs' recent text, Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, are claims that the emergence of English as a global lingua franca is (1) inevitable, (2) necessary for transnational justice and (3) to be accelerated. After first outlining the reasoning behind these claims, this article then goes on to argue that there are good reasons to doubt that English will inevitably become a global lingua franca; the absence of a lingua franca is not an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of transnational justice; and there is little justification for artificially accelerating the universalisation of English. Adapted from the source document.

Contrary to the view that linguistic homogeneity is required to create a viable demos, this article argues that linguistic diversity can be a permanent feature of any democratic community, so long as there is a unified and robust voting space that provides a common intentional object, around which distinct public spheres can aesthetically organize their political discourse. An attempt to explain how such a voting space operates in Switzerland, the finest existing exemplar of a multilingual demos, is given. Following the Swiss example, the author proposes, would go a long way to constituting the European Union as a democratically legitimate trans-national demos, despite its formidable linguistic diversity. Adapted from the source document.

Contrary to the view that linguistic homogeneity is required to create a viable demos, this article argues that linguistic diversity can be a permanent feature of any democratic community, so long as there is aunified and robust voting spacethat provides a common intentional object, around which distinct public spheres can aesthetically organize their political discourse. An attempt to explain how such a voting space operates in Switzerland, the finest existing exemplar of a multilingual demos, is given. Following the Swiss example, the author proposes, would go a long way to constituting the European Union as a democratically legitimate trans-national demos, despite its formidable linguistic diversity.

Central to Philippe Van Parijs' recent text, Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, are claims that the emergence of English as a global lingua franca is (1) inevitable, (2) necessary for transnational justice and (3) to be accelerated. After first outlining the reasoning behind these claims, this article then goes on to argue that there are good reasons to doubt that English will inevitably become a global lingua franca; the absence of a lingua franca is not an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of transnational justice; and there is little justification for artificially accelerating the universalisation of English.

Europe in search of legitimacy : strategies of legitimation assessed / Erik Oddvar Eriksen and John Erik Fossum -- Legitimising the Euro-"polity" and its "regime" : the normative turn in EU studies / Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione -- The new Europe : a federal state or a confederation of states? / Daniel J. Elazar -- The EU as a consociation : a methodologial assessment / Olivier Costa and Paul Magnette -- EU legitimacy revisited : the normative foundations of a multilevel polity / Nicole Bolleyer and Christine Reh -- We, the peoples of Europe? / Kalypso Nicolaidis -- Why Europe needs a constitution / Jürgen Habermas -- The idea of a European constitution / Pavlos Eleftheriadis -- The democratic costs of constitutionalisation : the European case / Dieter Grimm -- The constitutional conundrum of the European Union / Sergio Fabbrini -- Europe's "democratic deficit" : the question of standards / Giandomenico Majone -- The myth of Europe's democratic deficit / Andrew Moravcsik -- Why there is a democratic deficit in the EU : a response to -- Majone and moravcsik / Andreas Follesdal and Simon Hix -- Legitimacy in the multilevel European polity / Fritz W. Scharpf -- Beyond a constraining dissensus : the role of national parliaments in domesticating and normalising the politicization of European integration / Sandra Kröger and Richard Bellamy -- An emerging European public sphere / Erik Odvar Eriksen -- A theory of collective identity : making sense of the debate on a European identity / Klaus Eder -- Must Europe be Swiss? : on the idea of a voting space and the possibility of a multilingual demos / Joseph Lacey -- Civil society and EU democracy : "astroturf" representation? / Beate Kohler-Koch -- Whither European citizenship? : eros and civilisation revisited / C. Shore -- Why European citizenship? : normative approaches to supranational union / Rainer Baubock -- Citizenship, immigration, and the European social project : rights and -- Obligations of individuality / Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal -- Solidarity in the European Union / Andrea Sangiovanni