In recent years, not only governance, but also civil society has been a veritable growth industry both in politics and academia. Depending on the author, organised civil society was associated with expectations of increasing input or output legitimacy. With regard to the EU, participation of...

It has been argued that the European Union suffers from serious accountability deficits. But how can we establish the existence of accountability deficits? This paper tries to get to grips with the appealing but elusive concept of accountability by asking three types of questions, thus providing...

Democracies in Europe differ in what they see as being at the core of the democratic system. In some countries, citizen participation constitutes the fundamental tenet of democracy; in others, democracy is closely linked to pluralism and the protection of minorities. This paper tries to identify...

The paper presents a new approach to EU governance by stressing the interdependence of governance and integration. It suggests that EU governance is not just shaped by the emerging properties of the EU polity but has a strong impact both on system formation at national and European level. It is...

A debate has emerged between S. Hix and S. Bartolini on the plausibility and desirability of the politicization of the EU. By this it is usually meant a more important role for mass, competitive, and partisan politics both on the input- (expression of preferences) and on the output-...

This article aims to provide a better understanding as to why different institutional arrangements have the particular structural properties which they are found to have. Drawing on the system theoretical tradition in sociology and on ‘complexity theory’, this paper presents an analytical...