Suchergebnisse

The effects of a free market system on European citizenship are investigated. Arguing that globalization has diminished nation-states' authority to control public policy agendas, individual governments have responded by establishing more flexible postwelfare state national economies; consequently, social rights are constrained while social exclusion advances. Three explanations for the reduction in citizens' social protection are presented: increased competition between European Union member states; notions of social rights; the absence of a European Union state with the authority to define social rights; & member states' superior power over supranational institutions, thus preventing the promotion of social rights. Consequently, supranational institutions must be granted increased authority to ensure the maintenance of fundamental social rights in the international free market. 11 References. Adapted from the source document.

I outline the current debate over the European Union democratic deficit in terms of differing methodological approaches towards the realization of freedom and basic rights to political participation. Federalists opt for a model of freedom as noninterference and autonomous self-determination by proposing to tie basic rights in the EU to a univocal form of European-wide popular sovereignty. Although skeptics argue that the EU lacks the fundamental basis for such European-wide democratic self-determination, they ultimately defend a similar view of freedom as noninterference with their appeal to the collective will of the member states. Democratic revisionists instead point to the novel democratic potential of institutions in the EU such as the Open Method of Coordination for mediating overlapping sovereignties. I conclude using the example of basic rights to effective participation for immigrants and minorities to illustrate the strengths of the revisionist view over views that appeal to the principle of subsidiarity.

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES TWO DIFFERENT, YET INTERRELATED, PHENOMENA: PARLIAMENTARY DECLINE IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE "DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT" OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. IT ARGUES THAT THE LATTER HAS HELPED TO CONSOLIDATE THE FORMER. THIS IS ILLUSTRATED BY TWO SETS OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES. THE MAIN CONCLUSION TO BE DRAWN IS THAT A SIMPLE REORDERING OF SOME POLICIES WITHIN AND ACROSS DIFFERENT PILLARS WILL NOT REMEDY THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC SHORTFALLS.