Never has sovereignty been as fashionable as since its explanatory and normative force first came into doubt and its knell was tolled in the European Union. With the shift in authority away from the state to new sub-state, supra-state, post-state and non-state entities, an important question is...

In the second half of the nineties, a number of EU Member States went through intense public controversies over agro-food biotechnology. These controversies occurred almost synchronously, brought about parallel issue-framings and actor-constellations, led national governments to adopt...

This article argues that against all odds, the corporatist inclusion of the major societal interests in public decision-making is still a relevant governance mechanism in the European multi-level system. At the national level,a diversity of systems continues to operate. At least in some cases,...

Trust in political institutions is one of the key elements which make representative democracies work. Trust creates a connection between citizens and representative political institutions. Democratic governments which enjoy a large degree of trust also tend to have higher degrees of legitimacy...

This paper deals with the issue of institutionalising a legal pacifistic international order. While Kant’s idea of perpetual peace serves as the point of departure, it is argued that in order to find a proper institutional arrangement one would have to look beyond the two notions found in...

In this paper we suggest a research agenda beyond the legitimation strategies of the CIDEL project (i.e. legitimation through outcomes, values and rights). The European Union has developed beyond that of international organisation and derivative democratic construct. But the step from negative...

Europeanisation and globalisation are frequently held to undermine national democracy. What are then the prospects for democracy in the multi-level constellation that makes up the contemporary European political order? The European debate has taken the question of democracy beyond the nation...

In this paper we critically reassess the standard account of political representation, in order to question the mythical foundation of its premises and explain why it can no longer serve as an adequate explanatory framework in the modern political context. We argue that representation was not...

AbstractWhile the consequences of becoming an EU member state for national policies are usually the core concern of pre-membership debates and of post-accession assessments, studies on the effects of European integration on the political systems of the now fifteen member states have so far been...