E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU

Abstract

This article considers how a plurality of views on how the EU ought to be legitimated may even contribute to its overall legitimacy and not, as is often assumed, to its contestedness as a polity. It draws lessons for the EU from a recent turn in the literature on legitimacy towards analysing political systems as mechanisms for mediating between several views of legitimacy, rather than articulating any one. It identifies a range of views on how the Union ought to be legitimated. It appraises alternative mechanisms for combining or choosing between those views. It concludes with lessons for the constitutional development of the Union. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.

Legitimacy in Conflict: Concepts, Practices, Challenges

“…International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) are concerned with their legitimacy standing in the eyes of their member states (Beetham and Lord 1998;Lord and Magnette 2004;Hurd 2007;Zaum 2013). Similarly, international peace operations seek to legitimize themselves in the eyes of several audiences, including domestic publics in the states seconding staff or providing funds, local populations in the host states, and the key states who mandate the missions (often the UN Security Council; see Coleman 2007;Whalan 2013;von Billerbeck 2016;Gippert 2016b).…”

The paradoxes of legitimate EU leadership. An analysis of the multi-level leadership of Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras during the euro crisis

“…These vectors define the relationship between leaders and followers by explicating the legitimizing logic that binds them together (Figure 1; Lord and Magnette 2004). The first and most common source of legitimacy in democracies rests upon the legitimacy supplied by being democratically elected.…”

A Sociology of Knowledge Approach to European Integration: Four Analytical Principles

“…What context in different national academic fields led to the surge of interest in legitimacy, democracy and the question of a European public (e.g. Bellamy and Castiglione 2003;Follesdal and Hix 2006;Habermas 2004;Lord and Beetham 2001;Lord and Magnette 2004)? Is this normative focus reflected in the relative decline of EU studies in the US (Andrews 2012)?…”