Political representation and legitimacy in the European Union
Political representation and legitimacy in the European Union
复制标题
欧盟的政治代表性和合法性
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
1999
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Thomassen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
H. Schmitt;J. Thomassen
许多人所说的欧盟“民主赤字”问题有多严重？尽管有大量的理论文献讨论这个问题，但几乎没有对欧盟政治代表制度的有效性以及由此产生的欧盟公民的合法性信念进行系统的实证研究。本书阐述了对所谓民主赤字进行实证分析的概念框架。确定并分析了合法性信念的四个维度：欧洲政治共同体；欧盟政府的范围；欧盟政府的机构和程序；和欧盟政策。本书基于对欧盟及其成员国大众和不同阶层政治精英的大规模代表性调查（“欧洲代表性研究”），探讨了欧盟政治代表性的状况。结果表明，总体而言，识别和评价的对象越不具体，欧盟公民的合法性信念越积极，只要关注欧盟以外的问题，政治代表过程就相当有效。最后根据熟悉的欧盟机构改革策略对这些发现进行讨论。本书分为两个主要部分：I. 合法性（4 章）和 II. 合法性。代表（6Chs）；它还包含引言、结论和附录，提供欧洲代表性研究的详细信息。该书是报告这项研究结果的两本姊妹篇之一。另一本是《欧洲议会、各国议会和欧洲一体化》（由理查德·S·卡茨和伯恩哈德·韦塞尔斯编辑），也由牛津大学出版社出版。
How severe a problem is what many call the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU? Despite a voluminous theoretical literature dealing with this question, there is hardly any systematic empirical investigation of the effectiveness of the system of political representation in the EU, and of the legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens that spring from it. This book elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit. Four dimensions of legitimacy beliefs are identified and analysed: the European political community; the scope of EU government; the institutions and processes of EU government; and EU policies. Based upon large-scale representative surveys (the ‘European Representation Study’) among the mass publics, and different strata of the political elite of the EU and its member-states, the book examines the conditions of political representation in the EU. The results demonstrate, by and large, that legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens are the more positive the less specific the object of identification and evaluations is, and that the process of political representation works pretty well as long as issues other than EU issues are concerned. These findings are finally discussed in view of familiar strategies for institutional reform of the EU. The book is arranged in two main parts: I. Legitimacy (4 Chs) and II. Representation ( 6Chs); it also has an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix giving details of the European Representation Study. The book is one of two companion volumes that report on the results of this study. The other is The European Parliament, the National Parliaments, and European Integration (edited by Richard S. Katz and Bernhard Wessels), and is also published by OUP.