Contributions in the normative debate on the legitimacy of the EU are frequently based on two premises: The first premise is that the principles of the democratic constitutional state represent the normative ideal of political rule in the nation-state, but cannot justify the legitimacy of the...

The paper suggests a practice turn in the analysis of political legitimacy. Current social science research on political legitimacy suffers twofold. First, it shows an undue (silent) impact of an ethics-first perspective. Second, empirical approaches to political legitimacy mostly focus on...

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...