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Defense date: 04/06/2008 ; Examining Board: Professor Michael Keating, European University Institute, Supervisor Professor Christine Chwaszcza, European University Institute, Co-supervisor Professor Dario Castiglione, University of Exeter Professor Ulrika Mörth, Stockholm University ; This thesis examines the uses of legitimacy in debates on European integration. It treats the issue at a normative and empirical level. The normative part is an analysis of four theoretical contributions to the discourse on EU democracy: the standard version of the democratic deficit, the regulatory state, multi-level governance and integration through deliberation. The empirical part explores the political use of the theories' legitimacy claims in two cases: the European Parliament's inquiry into BSE and its debates relating to the Convention on the Future of Europe. The analysis reveals certain problems in theoretical and political discourse. Whereas the critique of the standard version has some merit, the positions formulating non-majoritarian notions of EU democracy are equally, if not more, problematic. The regulatory state, multilevel governance and integration through deliberation dress up old ideas – technocracy, interest group pluralism and constitutionalism respectively – and attempt to reinvest them with democratic legitimacy. The cases further illustrate the problem. For one thing, they indicate that the assumptions of the positions do not hold. What is more, non-majoritarian approaches to EU democracy, while allowing political actors to use the language of democracy, do not provide them with concrete proposals as to how existing structures might be democratised. The result is a discrepancy between the language of democracy, promising popular control and political equality, and the proposals for institutional and constitutional reforms, which tend to either discourage mass engagement or obscure how and in what capacity citizens are to participate. There is a tendency, I conclude, to confuse democracy with legitimacy, and legitimacy with consensus. As a result, the attempts at rearticulating EU democracy succeed neither in establishing a new basis for EU democracy, nor in identifying different or new forms of legitimacy. From this, three consequences derive: First, the democratic deficit should be regarded as structurally determined. Second, the persistence of the democratic deficit requires a thorough debate on the scope of EU competences. Finally, more attention should be devoted to the role of national and regional actors in European integration.

The ability of elected representatives to ensure that output is in line with political priorities is a core element of representative democracy. The article explores how delegation affects politicians' sense of control over the administration, examining delegation practices in Norwegian municipalities and the effects of accountability mechanisms. We find no effects of long-term delegation but negative effects of short-term delegation, indicating that politicians have shorter time horizons than assumed by the NPM notion of strategic political leadership. The negative effects are exacerbated when councillors interact with citizens, suggesting that short-term delegation offers insufficient leeway for politicians when addressing citizen input. ; This work was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government. ; publishedVersion

The ability of elected representatives to ensure that output is in line with political priorities is a core element of representative democracy. The article explores how delegation affects politicians' sense of control over the administration, examining delegation practices in Norwegian municipalities and the effects of accountability mechanisms. We find no effects of long-term delegation but negative effects of short-term delegation, indicating that politicians have shorter time horizons than assumed by the NPM notion of strategic political leadership. The negative effects are exacerbated when councillors interact with citizens, suggesting that short-term delegation offers insufficient leeway for politicians when addressing citizen input.