The EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy: the quest for democracy

The European Union in Crisis

“…In addition, they make (almost) all the decisions by consensus, so that no government can be said to be outvoted or marginalised by the rest of the member states. It is not surprising then that there have not been so many studies on the legitimacy and/or democracy of EU foreign policy (Sjursen 2011a;Vanhoonacker et al 2010 intergovernmental system, indirectly legitimised by the preponderant role of nationally designated officials. As the chapter makes it clear, EU foreign policy is mostly prepared and finalised, with certain discretion, by unelected national diplomats, the majority of whom resides in Brussels, who often change the national position and come to a joint definition of EU foreign policy.…”

“…The reason for having an ideal purely intergovernmental body as a standard is the fact that the literature seems to become worried once CFSP/CSDP moves away from intergovernmentalism in its practice, (Sjursen 2011a). In addition, Sjursen (2011b: 1081) offers four constituent pillars of intergovernmentalism as follows:…”

The EU, ASEAN and Interregionalism

“…2 The Lisbon Treaty has attempted to reconcile ongoing concerns regarding the EU's governance structure. For example, it has aimed to improve the EU's democratic legitimacy by making changes to the balance of responsibility and the mandates of the EU institutions and the EU member states (Borrás, 2009;Borrás and Radaelli, 2011), and in particular providing the EP with more mandate (Sjursen, 2011;Tonra, 2011). This has also had an effect on the functioning of multi-level governance structures, especially with the national parliaments being given new roles in decision-making processes, and Borrás and Peters (2011) have found that the Lisbon Treaty has triggered institutional changes at the national government level.…”

Research Methods in European Union Studies

“…The third strand is based on Jürgen Habermas' 'communicative action' and seeks to understand its role in providing both the legitimacy for, and the means of, EU global politics (e.g. Sjursen, 2011). Kissack argues that the Habermasian 'logic of argumentation' explains the way in which 'swing states' 'predisposed to being generally sympathetic to arguments' can be convinced by EU multilateralism (Kissack, 2010: 159).…”