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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.
European institutions. The combined effect of the dominance of executive resources and of domestic political culture has prevented the development of democratic accountability. I divided this study into two broad parts that correspond to the two types of political legitimacy and resources. In Chapters 3 and 4, I examined certain aspects of executive legitimacy, while in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, I studied legislative legitimacy. I concentrated mostly on symbolic and institutional structuration, that is, on the uses political agents make of 'Europe' and on the differentiated
and 4 I analyse European executive legitimacy: French presidential foreign policy ambitions in a changing Europe; the integration of French politicians and technocrats into the European bureaucracy; and the constitutional changes implemented in Finland and France in 2000, seen partly as responses to increasing European integration. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 deal with European legislative legitimacy: European Parliament election campaigns, MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) as a distinct group; and French intellectuals' endeavours, as representatives of civil
supranational-national dimension forms the first axis of the European political field, political legitimacy constitutes its second. Collective European symbolic political resources consist of two subtypes that correspond homologically to two types of national political legitimacy: executive and legislative legitimacy, or output and input legitimacy (Mény 1996; Scharpf 1999, 6). Executive legitimacy is held by agents in institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, institutions that hold partially differing conceptions of the European Union
democratic process to varying degrees and depending on the political context. Politicians aim to transform these resources into votes, and then retransform this acquired 18 Democracy, social resources and political power in the European Union political legitimacy into other resources. In contrast to this legislative source, in France executive legitimacy stemming from membership in specific social groups overrides legislative legitimacy (Mény 1996). Social connections are crucial in view of access to the most important decision-making centre, the entourage of the
late’ would continue.156 This optimism stemmed from his new-found belief that most Catholics were moderate ‘papists’, ever ‘ready to defend the Prince that protects them’.157 Irish Protestants had rewarded this deferential disposition, he went on, by allowing Catholics to worship according to their own fashion, a situation he suggested might be given legislative legitimacy in the future in repayment for good behaviour.158 Contrariwise, he mooted that it was now only a minority of bigoted Catholics, who had been ‘brought up in the Pope’s colleges’ and were ‘sworn to