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Democracy through Strong Publics in the European Union?[Note 1. Earlier versions of this article have benefited from comments ...]
Author(s) -
Eriksen Erik Oddvar,
Fossum John Erik
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5965.00362
Subject(s) - publics , parliament , deliberation , political science , charter , democracy , nexus (standard) , convention , european union , law and economics , order (exchange) , representative democracy , law , politics , public administration , sociology , business , engineering , finance , economic policy , embedded system
This article explores the democratizing role of strong publics, which are institutionalized bodies of deliberation and decision–making. Strong publics are important to modern democracy as they subject decision–making to justificatory debate. This article evaluates selected aspects of the institutional nexus of the EU in order to see if they qualify as strong publics. The focus is on comitology, the European Parliament and the Charter Convention. These bodies vary in their status as strong publics, but to various degrees they all inject the logic of impartial justification and reason–giving into the EU system.