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There has been a lot of talk about the European Union's so-called 'democratic deficit', by which is meant its lack of legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens. This book provides a critical analysis of the democratic stalemate in European politics. It argues that the root of the 'democratic deficit' has more to do with the domestic political fields of the Union's member-states and the structure of the evolving European political field than with the relationships between supranational institutions. The book analyses the complex ways 'Europe' is integrated into domestic politics and shows how domestic political fields and cultures have prevented deepening integration. As a result of the formation of a European political field, political resources in European 'postnational' and 'postabsolutist' polities are being redistributed. The theory of structural constructivism proposed fuses French structural theories of politics and a 'bottom-up' approach to European integration. The book examines the relationship between French political traditions and the construction of a European security structure from the point of view of identity politics and the French post-imperialist syndrome. The educational and social homogeneity of French civil servants provides a political resource that certain individuals can use in Brussels, influencing the direction and form of European integration. Studying legislative legitimacy in the European Parliament elections, the book highlights that intellectuals are important players in French politics: the politics of the street has always been a key part of French political life.
incentives, flexible and adaptable party organisations, and the absorptive capacity of the main French political traditions. 20 The French party system Underlying continuities in the French party system The prestige of the presidency, and the majoritarian effects of the two-ballot electoral system are potent institutional variables. In a formal sense, at least, the bipolar party system remains a structural variant of the rules of political competition in the Fifth Republic, though we observe an ever-increasing gap between formal bipolarity, on the one hand, and the
conditioned by the structures of national political fields and their specific historical traditions. In this chapter, I will examine the relationship between French political traditions and the construction of a European security structure. This will be approached from the point of view of identity politics and the French post-imperialist syndrome (Kortunov 2001), by investigating a complex set of symptoms arising from the discrepancy between French ambition and reality. National and European identities are intertwined with institutions that frame political action and ideas
– hence the crucial autonomypromoting function of state education. That autonomy should be promoted by the state was not seen as a paradox. In the French political tradition, the state shapes, rather than regulates, liberal society, and modern individualism is seen as intimately linked to the civilising power of social and political institutions.21 The perfectionist strand of laïcité, therefore, fitted neatly into a tradition less wary of state paternalism than the Anglo-American tradition. Laïcité B was therefore originally articulated as the official liberal ideology