Abstract
Theories of demoi-cracy have recently gained salience in the continuous debate on a legitimate democratic Euro polity. Demoi-crats argue that multiple demoi can provide the European Union (EU) with its much sought-after democratic legitimacy. This article aims to offer an empirical contribution to the literature on the EU as a legitimate demoi-cracy. The media debates in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France were analysed in order to identify resonance of demoi-cratic ideas. Comparative analysis of legitimation statements in opinion articles in two quality newspapers per country shows that the debates often share a similar point of departure as demoi-cratic theories. However, the evaluation of this situation and the existing EU structures' legitimacy relies on either intergovernmental or supranational democratic idea(l)s. In conclusion, the analysis offers little evidence of ideas of demoi-cracy resonating in these élite debates on the EU's legitimacy except for a few potentially promising exceptions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 37-55 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Journal of European Public Policy |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2015 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
I want to acknowledge the Politics Department of the University of Exeter and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for providing funding for the Ph.D. Hans Willem Blom acted as my adviser for my MSc thesis in Public Administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands; I am still very grateful for his guidance. I would like to thank the participants and discussant Christilla Roederer-Rynning of the workshop on ‘the EU as a demoi-cracy’ at the ETH (November 2013). Further, I want to thank its organizers and editors of this collection, Francis Chevenal, Sandra Levenex and Frank Schimmelfennig. The Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, provided space and resources during part of the writing process. In addition, I thank Dario Castiglione, Nicole Bolleyer, and Achim Hurrelmann for their valuable feedback. Finally, I also thank the referees for their helpful comments.
Keywords
- democratic deficit
- Demoi-cracy
- European Union
- legitimacy
- media analysis
- political claims analysis
