"This book brings together academics as well as practitioners to give a forward-looking, holistic view of the realities of EU citizen participation across the spectrum of participatory opportunities"--

This book examines the multitude of challenges which the European Commission faces: once the centre of political gravity in Europe’s integration process, the growth of Euroscepticism and the emergence of new institutional rivals threaten to undermine its status as an institution. Tracing the roots of the Commission’s decline from the early 1990s through to the Eurozone and refugee crises, Stuart A Brown draws on new evidence to illustrate why the EU’s executive now faces a battle for its future, and asks whether in the reforms of Jean-Claude Juncker the Commission may be facing its last chance. This study will appeal to students and scholars in EU institutions, politics, and public policy.

As the power and scope of the European Union moves further, beyond traditional forms of international cooperation between sovereign states, it is important to analyse how these developments are impacting upon national institutions and processes of democratic representation and legitimacy in the member countries. The authors in this book identifyfour core processes of democratic governance present in any democratic political system that link societal and state processes of decision-making: opinion formation, interestintermediation, national executive decision-making and national parliamentary scrutiny. From a normative perspective they discuss what impacts this process of Europeanizationhas on democracy in the evolving system. They conclude that more changes are seen within the state-centric than in the societal-centred processes of democracy, thus thepublic seems to have been 'left behind? in the process of constructing Europe. The empirical research and normative discussion presented in this book are designed to further our knowledge concerning the Europeanization of social and state processes of democracy and to contribute to the continuing dialogue on democracy in the EuropeanUnion. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and international relations, as well as those interested in European studies andcomparative politics.

Starting from the observation that the European Union now possesses many of the attributes of modern political systems, Hix and Høyland take an innovative approach to analysing, researching and teaching the EU. Using the general theories of political science to understand how the EU works, this text covers each of the main processes in the EU political system - executive, legislative and judicial politics, public opinion, interest groups and democracy, and regulatory, monetary and foreign policies - introducing the key political science tools, reviewing the relevant theories, and applying the knowledge in detailed descriptive analysis. As well as incorporating new data and the latest research, this new edition examines the consequences of the dramatic political and policy developments in the EU over the past decade. The methodology used in the text makes the political system of the EU accessible to political science students as a whole, as well as those specifically studying and researching the EU.

This book examines the multitude of challenges which the European Commission faces: once the centre of political gravity in Europe’s integration process, the growth of Euroscepticism and the emergence of new institutional rivals threaten to undermine its status as an institution. Tracing the roots of the Commission’s decline from the early 1990s through to the Eurozone and refugee crises, Stuart A Brown draws on new evidence to illustrate why the EU’s executive now faces a battle for its future, and asks whether in the reforms of Jean-Claude Juncker the Commission may be facing its last chance. This study will appeal to students and scholars in EU institutions, politics, and public policy.

As the European Union undergoes a major, self-proclaimed democratic exercise the Conference on the Future of Europe and approaches Treaty change, this volume offers a new model of citizen participation to address Europe's long-standing democracy challenge, and respond to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed are a set of democratic innovations, ranging from citizens assemblies to regulatory gaming to citizens initiatives and lobbying, which are complementary, not antagonistic, to existing representative democracy across the European continent. These innovations are emerging bottom-up across the continent and getting traction at local, national and EU level in a new era powered by technology. This book brings together academics as well as practitioners to give a forward-looking, holistic view of the realities of EU citizen participation across the spectrum of participatory opportunities. They all converge in arguing that, after many years of proven experimentation, the EU must institutionalize supranational, participative and deliberative, democratic channels to complement representative democracy and each other, and ultimately improve the effectiveness of EU citizen participation. While this institutional approach will not magically treat the EU democratic malaise, it should make the system more intelligible, accessible, and ultimately responsive to citizen demand without necessarily undertaking Treaty reform. The attempt to harness citizen participation to help address the current EU crisis needs the type of multi-faceted approach presented in this book. One that recognises the potential of existing and new democratic mechanisms, and also, importantly, the links between different instruments of citizen participation to improve the overall quality of EU's democratic system.

Its "democratic deficit" cannot be cured, argues Richard Body, because the way it works must make the people powerless.