Short introduction to my current research: Contemporary Theoretical Debates on Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union

Over the course of 20^th century Europe was the center of the biggest human catastrophes - the First and Second World War. Though, nowadays Europe is peaceful and cooperation, integration and development of economy, human rights and supra-national democracy are the main focus of consideration; it is not all good as it seems. Europe is in crisis, and most would agree that it’s the biggest political and economical challenge from its existence.

            The crisis is changing the general notion about our national politics and foremost our political system. Furthermore, this crisis raises fundamental questions for European citizens: how shell we be governed; what are our mutual responsibilities when it comes to economic and political cooperation; and how shell Europe relate to the rest of the world?

            In EU, except for the common currency, there is a lack of strong attachment that will keep Europe together. Maybe that is one of the reasons why the crisis has led to searching for solutions predominantly in the specialized discourses among economists. In this sense, we were satisfied when non-democratically elected technocrats in Greece and Italy were made prime-ministers. We thought that making the economy little better will solve the crisis. It has proven not to be true.

Yet, the crisis of the euro has also transferred over the European political sphere. Nonetheless, this political sphere seems to evolve around setting policies by educated technocratic elites, which put accent on analytical policy projected benefits in the form of economic prosperity and job creation. This managerial structure, while caring about transparency and policy implementation, neglects the political and cultural accountability. The single market, foremost, is in the center of the further integration and regulating competition is something that citizens acknowledge and accept. Moreover, the ‘real politics’ are made by national leaders, who in an institution called ‘The Council’ give the main political directions. That is why it is believed that as long as EU does no touch the ‘political sphere’ of the sovereign national states, like: taxes, education, defense etc, this small ‘democratic accountability’ can be ignored. And here is where the discourses between the progressive and conservative political ideas run into.

At the beginning of the crisis we thought that all the technocratic elites have to do is to make the unstable euro stable again, which will make the trust in banks bigger while the investors will not be suspicious to invest in foreign countries. However, the worsening debt crisis has forced the EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests. ‘The sovereign debts and the pressure of the markets have collided’ (Diez, 2012). This made the increasing interest on public debt and economic situation complicate for the consolidation process and resolvent of the crisis. Who has to give up the national sovereignty (the poor countries), and who can impose external austerity measures (the rich countries) is in the focus of the political debate.  

Which are the dominant discourses to overcome the democratic and economic crisis and what is the future of the European democracy (?) will be the questions that this thesis will try to consider. This dissertation will address these questions by comparing different contemporary theorists, political groups and EU leaders and will try to compare discourses on how to deal with the crisis. What's more, in this thesis, only those discourses analyzing the democratic legitimation crisis at EU level, who believe in the EU project, will be considered.