Suchergebnisse

AbstractDanny Nicol argues in this journal that my effort to devise a realistic normative conception of the European Union is unconvincing. I respond to his objections by correcting a number of misunderstandings of my original argument. I also use a more principled standard for providing evidence that the EU is indeed structurally unfit for democracy and emphasize the argument that the supranational layer of the EU is in need of a normative standard that is independent from the idea of democracy. The last section explicates the strength of normative realism.

Deliberative theory offers a very useful framework in the debate about legitimate governance in the European Union. It helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the EU by providing an analytical language free of the stalled nation-state cannon. Deliberative theory opens up new avenues for justifying non-majoritarian structures of political authority and thus suggests an innovative approach for explaining the EU's legitimacy and its shortcomings. Moreover, deliberative theory aids in bringing together the fragmented discipline of political science so long hampered by subdisciplines standing idle amongst one another. It has set into motion a lively discourse between the fields of Political Theory, Comparative Government, International Relations and European Integration Studies. Adapted from the source document.

The European Union is hardly concerned with issues of redistributive justice. It is one-sidedly focused on market-making policy, neglects the redistributive effects of its regulatory policies & de facto prohibits more extensive redistributive measures of its member states. The article shows that the bias of the EU is not an unintended side-effect of the integration process but one of its most important reasons. It is highly attractive for the member states to delegate competences to the EU & to use the EU as an international support mechanism for domestic reform concerns. The EU de facto functions as an instrument of the Member States to block demands for more redistributive justice. Adapted from the source document.

The best way to think about political legitimacy in the European Union is to consider it as the product of the mutual support provided by the legitimation resources of the member states and of supranational bodies. This parallelism between different sources of legitimation is an indispensable element of multi-level governance. Integration in this sense does not release democratic states committed to the rule of law from their obligation to subject political rule to legitimacy; rather, it gives the state a central role. Consequently, the task of the EU is not to overcome the democratic state but to shape structures of discourse that go beyond states. This kind of "post-emotive" understanding of the EU takes due account of the Union's fragmented societal foundations, and has the potential to guarantee a continuous process of political communication. Adapted from the source document.

Discusses the structural consequences of increasing economic globalization for the economic & social competence of states in the First & Third Worlds. Earlier in the postwar era, economic internationalization was accompanied by expanding national welfare regimes & some protectionism, which offered some balance of market & social community in the global economic order. This changed around the late 1970s as capital became increasingly mobile, & companies that had been "national champions" (eg, General Motors in the US, Siemens in Germany) became global players. Welfare regimes stopped expanding as welfare states became competiton states with declining social & economic competence. One effect of this has been a marginalization of less educated social strata. This has blurred center & periphery as territorial categories. Social & economic polarization are now feeding expanding peripheries in the center, while the center is an increasingly important phenomenon in the periphery. Some suggestions for developing a critical politics are offered. 54 References. Adapted from the source document.

Legal and political science cannot merge, but they should, at the very least, 'listen to each other'. This working paper is a further step in an ongoing interdisciplinary cooperation which seeks to make sense out of Louis Henkin's famous admonition. This co-operation had begun with a research project on the European comitology system in 1995 and the publication, inter alia, of two articles on deliberative supranationalism in 1997. The present article is an effort to get?/go beyond the scope of our original analyses and to explore the potential of our guiding ideas at a more general level of integration research. In Part I of this paper, Jürgen Neyer summarises strands of normative and positive political theory on which deliberative approaches to international and European governance can build. These approaches not only support coherence, social acceptance and normative recognition, they also have in important potential for the design of empirical studies. They seem to be particularly promising for the understanding of the institutional design and the political process in the EU. In Part II, Christian Joerges first summarises the objections against deliberative suprantionalism and comitology in legal science. He then presents a conflict-of-law's approach to European law which builds upon the 1997 articles and seeks to develop their normative-legal perspectives further. European law is interpreted as a new type of conflict of law which constitutionalises a European unitas in pluralitate. Comitology is interpreted as a cognitive opening of the legal system which institutionalises a second order of conflict of laws.