This book attempts to answer the question ‘Which institutional architecture for which kind of democracy for the EU?’ by bringing together the two strands of the debate—the institutional analysis of the Union and its democratic assessment. Its aim is to discuss a series of institutional architectures in the light of the democratic quality of the processes and decisions generated by them. The discussion of the various institutional architectures is then matched by a discussion of the principles according to which institutional architectures and governance structures must be assessed. The first p ... More

This book attempts to answer the question ‘Which institutional architecture for which kind of democracy for the EU?’ by bringing together the two strands of the debate—the institutional analysis of the Union and its democratic assessment. Its aim is to discuss a series of institutional architectures in the light of the democratic quality of the processes and decisions generated by them. The discussion of the various institutional architectures is then matched by a discussion of the principles according to which institutional architectures and governance structures must be assessed. The first part of the book starts from the democratic principles to discuss which institutional architectures are likely to embody them. The second part is dedicated to the institutional architectures that best describe the current state and the likely future development of the Union. The fundamental belief that animates this book is that it is only by paying attention to the democratic or other legitimacy credentials of the Union that the process of European integration may hope to be sustainable, particularly in the face of the difficult economic crisis that the members of the euro area and the Union in general are experiencing. By looking at the way in which this crisis unfolds and at the (institutional) decisions that are made to counter it, the democratic legitimacy of the EU institutional architecture will be put to a particularly severe test and will reveal its sustainability or vulnerability.