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The ‘Mixed’ Constituent Legitimacy of the European Federation
Author(s) -
Niesen Peter
Publication year - 2017
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/jcms.12518
Subject(s) - legitimacy , european union , political science , power (physics) , democratic legitimacy , member states , politics , perspective (graphical) , dual (grammatical number) , law and economics , democracy , function (biology) , law , sociology , economics , philosophy , mathematics , international trade , linguistics , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , biology
Constitutional lawyers and political scientists have described the European Union as a federation of states ( fédération , Bund ). They deny that federations generate a new union‐wide constituent authority besides the pouvoirs constituants of the member states. Habermas argues that federative constituent power lies with individuals in their dual roles as citizens of the several states and as citizens of the Union. I argue that from the perspective of democratic theory, this view is methodologically superior to other ‘dualist’ views of federative constituent power (J. Cohen), but go on to criticize it in two respects. It gives insufficient justification for the persistence of domestic pouvoirs constituants, and it reifies their defensive function.