European Parliament

European integration is progressing at an even more rapid rate. Accompanying this progress is an increasing debate about the institutional shape and legitimacy of this new political order. This debate is driven in part by conflicting values, and in part by uncertainty. This book addresses the question of parliamentary involvement in the emerging European political system by looking at both national and European levels of parliamentary representation. In doing this, it gives greater attention to the role of national parliaments than is usual in discussions about democracy in the European Union. Based on interviews and surveys among members of parliament at the European level, and in eleven member states, it analyses the role of parliaments and parliamentarians, the linkages between national citizenry and the European level, and the problems and perspectives of institutional change. The book is provides analyses of the views from within concerning European integration and concentrates of three dimensions: the MPs themselves; their embeddedness in the process; and their perspectives on institutional structures. These views from within offer new insights and answers to institutional problems in the European Union and the so-called democratic deficit.

The power of the European Parliament has been steadily and visibly increasing in recent years. This arises from EU treaty changes and from the fact that more and more decisions are being made at the European level. At the same time, however, the already low rate of turnout in European elections has actually been declining. This powerful new study examines a seemingly paradoxical situation which has raised deep concern about the democratic deficit in the European Union. The authors analyse the concepts of participation, democracy, and legitimacy and their applicability at the European level and develop a typology of voter participation and abstention in the European context. Combining extensive new data from specially commissioned surveys in all 1994 member states with a searching review of the existing evidence, they provide a comprehensive account of the legitimacy of the European Union and examine the images of the European Parliament, citizens experiences of the 1994 campaign and their perceptions of the parties and the candidates. In an analysis that challenges existing interpretations, the institutional, demographic, and attitudinal sources of participation and abstention are fully explored. The study concludes by considering how participation and democratic representation might be enhanced, acknowledging forthrightly the obstacles and inherent limits that such efforts are likely to face.

How severe a problem is what many call the 'democratic deficit' of the European Union? Despite a voluminous theoretical literature dealing with this question, there is hardly any systematic empirical investigation of the effectiveness of the system of political representation in the EU and of the legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens that spring from it. This volume elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit. Four dimensions of legitimacy beliefs are identified and analysed: the European political community, the scope of EU government, the institutions and processes of EU government, and EU policies. Based upon large-scale representative surveys among the mass publics, and different strata of the political elite of the EU and its member-states, the book examines the conditions of political representation in the EU. The results demonstrate, by and large, that legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens are the more positive, the less specific the object of identification and evaluations is; and that the process of political representation works pretty well as long as issues other than European Union issues are concerned. These findings are finally discussed in view of familiar strategies for institutional reform of the European Union.

Arguing that the subject must be explored from a perspective that takes changing definitions of citizenship into account, this book develops the concept of citizenship practice.

In the 1990s there has been an increasingly widespread sense that the governing elites are losing touch with their peoples. leaders are no longer able to count upon the acquiescence of their citizens to which they were accustomed. The disenchantment has resulted in the loss of public support for the political institutions of both the individual European nation states and of the European Union. Taking elitism and populism as the opposite poles between which the political leaders need to steer, the contributors successively consider why there appears to have been a degeneration in the quality of elite leaders, with civil societies turning against their governments and the elite mediators between the powerless and the powerful. The agenda-setting role of the media, the rival appeals to representation and referendum, the problems encountered by political parties and organised interests, and the tensions between public demand and economic constraints are all discussed. The chapters suggest that the need to lead from the front rather than from behind remains indispensable in elitist democracies.

The book begins with an analysis of what integration theorists expected of the directly elected Parliament when such an idea was still on the drawing board. Robert Corbett examines what the Parliament has achieved in practice, and its significance in the formation of the EU. This comprehensive examination of the Parliament's impact of the successive renegotiations of the European treaties also considers its day-to-day influence on the development of European policies.

This book examines the impact of increased legislative power and political authority on the internal development of the European Parliament and the supranational party group system. This is done through an analysis of changes in the hierarchical structures that regulate the internal organization of both the European Parliament as a whole and the individual party groups. In addition, the changing pattern of coalition formation between party groups across time and legislative procedure is analyzed.