Reflections on EU Legitimacy and Governing

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Table of Contents: I. Introduction. – II. A missing piece: throughput legitimacy. – III. Issues of representation.

Abstract: Carol Harlow provides us with a nuanced and sophisticated assessment of the development of the EU’s formal lawmaking processes and their legitimacy implications. She places particular emphasis on the important notion of executive legislation. That naturally puts the focus on delegation and principal/agent theory, which is discussed in relation to the EU in general. With regard to legitimacy, Harlow discusses both the input and output dimensions. The article brings in some of the crises-driven changes or mutations that the EU is presently experiencing. In this contribution I focus on some of the core notions in the analytical framework that Harlow constructs, with particular emphasis on legitimacy, representation and democracy.

Keywords: legitimacy – polity – throughput – representation – democracy – shape-shifting.

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European Papers, Vol. 1, 2016, No 3, pp. 1033-1040
ISSN
2499-8249 - doi: 10.15166/2499-8249/114

* Professor, ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, j.e.fossum@arena.uio.no.

 

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