Abstract
The introduction presents the book’s approach and core questions. The EU as a democratic polity has been invented: it is a product of innovative actors and thinkers that conceptualised and later realised what for a long time had been a utopia—the unification of Europe. The question of how to conceptualise the new polity has be contested from the very beginning, as concepts, ideas or utopias of European unification differ considerably. The processes of inventing and building the EU thus have been marked by decisive controversies on the character and the shape that the possibly unified Europe should have. It is these very conceptual controversies related to inventing the EU as a democratic polity in both theory and institutional practice and led by both academics and politicians, activists and bureaucrats that are studied in the book.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Christiansen, Thomas, Gerda Falkner, and Knud Erik Jørgensen. 2002. “Theorizing EU Treaty Reform: Beyond Diplomacy and Bargaining.” Journal of European Public Policy 9 (1): 12–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760110104154.
Christiansen, Thomas, Knud Erik Jorgensen, and Antje Wiener, eds. 2001. The Social Construction of Europe. London: Sage.
Dahl, Robert A. 2000. On Democracy. Yale Nota Bene. New Haven: Yale University Press.
DeBardeleben, Joan, and Achim Hurrelmann, eds. 2007. Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance: Legitimacy, Representation and Accountability in the European Union. Transformations of the State. Basingstoke, UK, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Diamond, Larry Jay, and Leonardo Morlino. 2004. “The Quality of Democarcy. An Overview.” Journal of Democracy 15 (4): 20–31.
Dinan, Desmond. 2004. Europe Recast: A History of European Union. The European Union Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Farrell, Henry, and Adrienne Héritier. 2007. “Codecision and Institutional Change.” West European Politics 30 (2): 285–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402380701239723.
Hix, Simon, and Bjørn Kåre Høyland. 2011. The Political System of the European Union. 3rd ed. The European Union Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ihalainen, Pasi, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen, eds. 2016. Parliament and Parliamentarism. A Comparative History of Disputes on a European Concept. New York: Berghahn Books.
Jachtenfuchs, Markus. 2002. Die Konstruktion Europas: Verfassungsideen und institutionelle Entwicklung. 1. Aufl. Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert Bd. 9. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Kaiser, Wolfram, and Antonio Varsori, eds. 2010. European Union History. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kaiser, Wolfram, Brigitte Leucht, and Morten Rasmussen. 2009. The History of the European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950–72. UACES Contemporary European Studies Series 7. New York, London: Routledge.
Kauppi, Niilo. 2010. “The Political Ontology of European Integration.” Comparative European Politics 8 (1): 19–36.
———. 2018. Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union: Fields, Intellectuals and Politicians. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Cham: Springer.
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1967. “Richtlinien für das Lexikon politisch-sozialer Begriffe der Neuzeit.” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 11: 81–99.
———. 1996. “A Response to a Comment on Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.” In The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts. New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte, edited by Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter, 59–70. Washington: German Historical Institute.
———. 2000. Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik. 1st ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2004. “Einleitung.” In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. I, edited by Otto Brunner, Wener Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck. 8 vols, XIII–XXVII. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
———. 2006. “Begriffsgeschichtliche Probleme der Verfassungsgeschichtsschreibung.” In Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache. 1st ed., 365–401. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Kreppel, Amie. 2010. “Looking ‘Up’, ‘Down’ and ‘Sideways’: Understanding EU Institutions in Context.” West European Politics 34 (1): 167–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2011.523551.
Krotz, Ulrich, and Joachim Schild. 2015. Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-First Century Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lacroix, Justine, and Kalypso Nicolaïdis. 2010. European Stories: Intellectual Debates on Europe in National Contexts. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Manin, Bernard. 1997. The Principles of Representative Government. Themes in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, T. H. 1950. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Citizenship and Social Class: And Other Essays, 1–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Palonen, Kari. 1998. “Judging Politics—A Temporal Perspective.” Redescriptions (Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought) (2): 5–11.
———. 2000. “Die Umstrittenheit der Begriffe bei Max Weber.” In Die Interdisziplinarität der Begriffsgeschichte, edited by Gunter Scholz, 145–58. Hamburg: Meiner.
———. 2004. Die Entzauberung der Begriffe. Das Umschreiben der politischen Begriffe bei Quentin Skinner und Reinhart Koselleck. Münster: Lit.
———. 2005. “The Politics of Conceptual History.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 1 (1): 37–50.
———. 2012. “Reinhart Koselleck on Translation, Anachronism and Conceptual Change.” In Why Concept Matter? Translating Social and Political Thought, edited by Martin Burke and Melvin Richter, 73–92. Leiden: Brill.
Parsons, Craig. 2003. A Certain Idea of Europe. Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Piattoni, Simona. 2010. The Theory of Multi-level Governance: Conceptual, Empirical, and Normative Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 2009. The Concept of Representation [Nachdr.]. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pocock, John. 1998. “The Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times.” In The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, edited by Gershon Shafir, 31–41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2006. Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2008. “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse.” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 303–26. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342.
———. 2010. “Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change Through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth ‘New Institutionalism’.” European Political Science Review 2 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.1017/s175577390999021x.
Skinner, Quentin. 1996. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Reprinted. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1999. “Rhetoric and Conceptual Change.” Redescriptions (Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought), 60–73. Accessed October 5, 2012. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/redescriptions/Yearbook%201999/Skinner%20Q%201999.pdf.
———. 2009. “A Genealogy of the Modern State: British Academy Lectures.” Proceedings of the British Academy (162): 325–370.
Sternberg, Claudia Schrag. 2013. The Struggle for EU Legitimacy: Public Contestation, 1950–2005. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tömmel, Ingeborg. 2014. The European Union: What It Is and How It Works. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Triandafyllidou, Anna, and Ruby Gropas. 2015. What Is Europe? 21st Century Europe. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Urbinati, Nadia. 2006. Representative Democracy Principles and Genealogy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Wiesner, Claudia. 2014. Demokratisierung der EU durch nationale Europadiskurse? Strukturen und Prozesse europäischer Identitätsbildung im deutsch-französischen Vergleich. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
———. 2018. “The Micro-Politics of Parliamentary Powers: European Parliament Strategies for Expanding its Influence in the EU Institutional System.” Journal of European Integration 40 (4): 375–391.
Wiesner, Claudia, Anna Björk, Hanna-Mari Kivistö, and Katja Mäkinen. 2018. “Shaping Citizenship as a Political Concept.” In Shaping Citizenship: A Political Concept in Theory Debate, and Practice, edited by Claudia Wiesner, Anna Björk, Hanna-Mari Kivistö, and Katja Mäkinen. London: Routledge.
Wiesner, Claudia, and Meike Schmidt-Gleim, eds. 2014. The Meanings of Europe. London: Routledge.
Wintle, Michael, and Menno Spiering, eds. 2003. Ideas of Europe Since 1914: The Legacy of the First World War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wiesner, C. (2019). Inventing the EU as a Democratic Polity: Introduction. In: Inventing the EU as a Democratic Polity. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94415-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94415-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94414-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94415-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)