Abstract
A core question regarding democracy in the EU is whether the EU has, or can obtain, a proper democratic subject, a demos. This question stresses the affective dimension behind the triad of representative democracy rather than its institutional side. Input legitimacy, this is the core argument behind this conceptual move, requires a demos that has a certain affective link to the EU. But to what extent is this normatively relevant and practically possible in the EU? To clarify these questions, this chapter links two perspectives in discussing the question of EU demos formation. It discusses, first, to what extent EU citizenship as it stands can be regarded as democratic citizenship. Second, the demos question is discussed in a theoretical-conceptual perspective and regarding some core empirical findings in this respect.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “European identity” is often used in the debate on these topics. Even if this term probably expresses everyday feelings of EU citizens better (they feel they are “Europeans” rather than EU citizens), the term EU identity expresses what is at stake more exactly: a democratic identity of EU citizens as EU citizens.
- 2.
This argument differs from the one made in the demoicracydebate: demoicracy mainly argues that only the national demoi can be a legitimating base for the EU (see, e.g. M. Weber)
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Wiesner, C. (2019). Citizenship and Democracy in the EU. In: Inventing the EU as a Democratic Polity. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94415-9_14
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