Empirical legitimation analysis in International Relations: how to learn from the insights – and avoid the mistakes – of research in EU studies

The political legitimation (or de-legitimation) of the European Union (EU) has been the object of much empirical research. This paper argues that this research holds lessons that can inform debates about the legitimation of g

Demoi-cratic citizenship in Europe: an impossible ideal?

The idea of demoi-cracy, which proposes to base democratic institutions not on one demos but on multiple co-existing demoi, has gained increasing popularity in debates about the democratization of the European Union. Existing models of demoi-cracy have, however, paid relatively little attention to the qualities that Europeans would need to possess in order to effectively participate in European politics as demoi-cratic citizens. This contribution seeks to identify these qualities; it then looks at empirical evidence to assess whether it is realistic that Europeans will, at least in the medium term, be able to live up to these requirements. While there are some indica

Did the Eurozone crisis undermine the European Union’s legitimacy? An analysis of newspaper reporting, 2009–2014

The Eurozone financial crisis was widely seen as a challenge to the legitimacy of the European Union (EU). It raised concerns about the quality of its policy outputs, the democratic character of its decision-making, and the EU’s willingness to respect its own legal framework. This article examines how the legitimacy dimension of the crisis was reflected in media discourse. Using methods of political claims analysis, it studies newspaper reporting in four Eurozone states (Germany, Austria, Spain, and Ireland) between 2009 and 2014. It inquires whether the Eurozone crisis led to an increase in discourse that explicitly challenged the legitimacy of the EU and assesses which discourse constellations were particularly likely to result in de-legitimation. The analysis shows that there was no dramatic erosion of legitimacy in media discourse. EU-related reporting was dominated by statements from EU and member-state executives and largely had a technocratic focus, until the outcome of the 2014 European Parliament election made popular discontent with the EU impossible to ignore

Introduction: multilevel democracy in the European Union and the innovations of the Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty contained three institutional innovations that were designed to make the European Union (EU) more democratic: the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP), the Early Warning Mechanism (EWM) for national parliaments, and the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). This short article sets the stage for a symposium that assesses whether the three mechanisms have indeed contributed to the EU’s democratization. It situates OLP, EWM, and ECI in the EU’s system of multilevel democracy and raises the question of whether the mechanisms address the institutional and societal factors that cause the EU’s democratic deficit

The Eurozone crisis and citizen engagement in EU affairs

While the Eurozone crisis has contributed to Europeanisation trends in the domestic politics of EU member states, it has not to the same extent triggered citizen mobilisation in EU-level democratic procedures. Theories that treat politicisation as an undifferentiated phenomenon tend to miss this important distinction. This article suggests that the weakness of supranational citizen mobilisation is linked to factors that restrict the citizens’ receptiveness to EU-related messages: limited knowledge of the EU and a weak sense of political efficacy, a discursive framing that conceptualises the EU as a consortium of member states rather than a supranational entity, and attributions of responsibility for the crisis that de-emphasise the role of EU policies. These factors constitute cultural opportunity structures that influence politicisation patterns; they imply that politicisation is, under present conditions, more likely to result in a renationalisation than in a supranationalisation of EU politics