AbstractIn our analysis we argue that the EU eastern enlargement did not result in significant change of predominantly ethnos based collective identity in the new EU countries. Consequently, we argue that, the EU eastern enlargement has, by and large, been understood by citizens of new EU...

This paper proposes to assess the representative quality of European Union decision-making by way of a micro-approach which traces the effectiveness of the mechanisms of representation that connect the European peoples to the decision-making process. In particular, it proposes to distinguish...

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the role of norms in EU foreign policy by looking at EU policies in the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the making of a Consolidated Maritime Labour Convention (ILOMLC). Given the economic importance of shipping for many EU members,...

The attempt to pin down the constitutive elements of the European public sphere is typically marked by ambivalence between normative and descriptive elements. In normative terms, the European public sphere is identified through the standards which should be used to assess the legitimacy of...

Next to states and established international organisations, the European Union is emerging as an actor in the realm of international conflict management. Has the media in the EU Member States reflected this change? Our study reveals that the EU, despite its limited institutional capacity in...

The emergence of a transnational public sphere in Europe is expected to facilitate democratic control and public debate about European issues as well as enable the formation of a European collective identity. Taking this claim seriously, though, reveals that empirical research has so far taken a...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between media coverage of EU policy-formulation and the involvement of national parliaments in these processes. The literature has variously argued that the activity of national parliaments in EU policy-formulation is unrelated to media...

This paper explores how and to what extent it is possible to contribute to the democratisation of the European political order by means of modifying the ways in which taxes are deliberated upon, decided and collected in the old continent. In the first part, the author elucidates the particular...

This paper argues that indicators of democratic performance should in the first instance be selected for their normative defensibility, rather than their empirical measurability. Yet democratic theory is a hard task-master in setting conditions for the normative derivation of indicators. It at...

The efforts of the EU to facilitate gender justice, have been substantial historically, and are ongoing. An EU gender justice index is to be launched in the near future, adding to other efforts. The index is to be based on recommendations in the Commission funded report towards an EU gender...