CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Kolaric, Tamara |
|---|---|
| Title | Citizenship, elections, legitimacy - a way towards reducing the 'democratic deficit' of the European Union |
| Summary | In this paper, I re-question the possibilities for strengthening legitimacy of European Union and reducing its democratic deficit through introducing a unified electoral system for European Parliament elections. Such an action would, presumably, have a twofold effect. One, ‘indirectly’, it would lead to an increase in European identity feeling, as one of the dimensions of European citizenship. This would activate the citizenship concept from its passive state, leading to increase in political participation (turnout), making EP more representative and thus legitimate. To argue for this, I use the basics of the idea of ‘constitutional patriotism’, but adjust it to the needs of a politeia sui generis without both a patriotic feeling and constitutional document. Two, based on argument by Hix and Hagemann, I argue that introduction of proportional system with small, cross-country electoral districts could lead to increase in responsibility of EP parliamentarians, but also strengthening the position of ‘Europarties’, thus reducing Union’s ‘democratic deficit’. I test the assumptions arising from the claims made - that increase in information and citizenship feeling does lead to an increase in voter turnout – and receive mixed, but optimistic results. |
| Supervisor | Pelinka, Anton |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/kolaric_tamara.pdf |
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