ABSTRACT

Today’s Europe is marked by an amazing pace of integration. The European Union now consists of twenty five member states, however there is confusion and disagreement about its future design.

Making The European Polity investigates how the European Union should develop and organize itself and offers a reflexive approach to integration based on the theory of communicative action. It conceives of the EU as a law based supranational polity lacking the identity of a people as well as the coercive means of a state and argues that it is a polity with an organized capacity to act, but no sole apex of authority. Making an important contribution to the theoretical discussions on the EU, these contributors explore a range of issues including legitimacy, post-national democracy and integration and provide in-depth analyses of social and tax policy, foreign policy, identity formation, the reform process and the constitutional effects of enlargement.

This book will appeal to all political scientists and particularly to students and researchers of European Politics.

part Part I|118 pages

Reflexive polity-building and post-national integration

chapter |22 pages

Reflexive integration in Europe

ByEriksen Erik Oddvar

chapter |29 pages

Reflexive integration in Europe

ByJames Francis Bohman

chapter |25 pages

On the political theory of the Euro-polity

ByRainer Bruns

part Part II|146 pages

The Euro-polity in the making

chapter |16 pages

5 The quest for European identity

ByGerard Delanty

chapter |24 pages

Contemporary European constitution-making

Constrained or reflexive?
ByJohn Erik Fossum

chapter |27 pages

8 The purse of the polity

ByMenéndez Agustín José

chapter |23 pages

9 Soft governance, employment policy and committee deliberation

ByKerstin Jacobsson, Åsa Vifell

chapter |16 pages

10 Widening or reconstituting theEU?

ByErik O. Eriksen, John Erik Fossum, Helene Sjursen

chapter |18 pages

11 Conclusion

From reflexive integration to deliberative supranationalism?
ByErik O. Eriksen