Uncharted forms of representing Europe: Claims, practices, and interactions in European integration history.
Political representation in the history of the European Economic Community (EEC) and European Union (EU) has been characterised in ambivalent ways. In particular, democratic legitimacy and forms of representation, namely with the European Parliament, have been the focus of long running debates and sources of contestation. On the one hand, the European Parliament has long had a reputation as a weak institution that embodied the EU's lack of democratic legitimacy. On the other, the gradual increase in the parliament's supranational authority with efforts to combat a perceived democratic deficit, has been discussed as a major factor in the crisis of parliamentary democracies in the member states.
However, by focusing on particular forms of parliamentary democracy as the be all and end all of democratic representation in European integration, the role and impact of alternative actors, the different practices employed, and the alternative paths taken in representing ‘Europe’ have been neglected. Numerous economic and social organisations, expert committees, business associations, legal professions, NGOs, as well as individuals and transnational citizens' movements have laid claim to representing ‘European’ interests. These alternative actors have, in different ways, sought to represent the interests of citizens and a wide array of groups, whose wishes, interests, or concerns may not have been met through parliamentary representation at the institutional level.
By exploring the interactions between these claims and relating the history of their acceptance and criticism to the dynamics that fed on their connections and contradictions this workshop aims to extend the perspective on political representation in European integration history through an interdisciplinary approach. A perspective that includes this broader framework of political representation shows that the ambivalent perception of democratic representation on the EEC and EU institutional level is a result of the dynamics caused by the change within a network of interrelated representative claims.
Pre-circulated papers will be discussed at the workshop. Participation is only possible after prior registration.
Informationen zur Forschungsgruppe Demokratie und Staatlichkeit