Europe, Womanhood, and Islam are concepts infused with what Ricoeur called a surplus of meaning. That is, they bear diverse and often contradictory significations for observers at different times and places. This paper compares the interplay of tensions between the concepts by unpacking how they...

This chapter scrutinises MacCormick’s liberal nationalism. The first issue with which he grapples is how well the post-sovereign constellation can re-configure nationalism through disposing of the exclusivist and suppressive (of regional forms of nationalism)propensities built into the...

This working paper offers a reconstruction and critical analysis of Joerges’ conflicts theory of European Union law. It is claimed that the theory of European conflicts is structured around three key premises: first, that there are functional and normative reasons to transcend the autarchic...

This paper aims at putting forward the key elements of a constitutional theory of European law on the basis of D. Neil MacCormick’s theory of European constitutional pluralism. Firstly, I consider how the institutional theory of law fleshed out by MacCormick creates the theoretical space...

With the White Paper on European Governance (2001) the European Commission has introduced a new approach to European policy-making and civil society making public consultations an essential tool for improving governance and policy outputs. The present study seeks to explore the role of online...

In this paper, we apply a revised version of the discourse quality index (DQI) developed by Steenbergen et al. on European Parliament debates in an attempt to evaluate the democratic quality of representation at the EU level. This updated measurement instrument, after the inclusion of new...

Our aim in this paper is to explore three related trends which have emerged in recent years that are contributing to important changes in the way both social welfare and democratic decision making over its form and content interact. These trends are: growing inequality, an increasing devolution...

After each European election nearly half of the outgoing Members of the European Parliament re-enter the EP for an additional legislative term. Despite this being a persistent phenomenon, the reasons behind it are still unclear. In this paper I test the hypothesis that the work of an MEP in the...

The state’s mode of existence is still a problem to political science analysis. How can we decide if a political order (for example the EU) is a state or not? This paper discusses the ontological quality of the state and what follows from that to its analysis. It is suggested to view the state...

There are few policy areas in which European integration in the past two decades has progressed as fast as in the foreign, security and defence realm. The democratic foundation of these developments, however, has been contested. This paper examines the question of democratic legitimacy from one...