The EU and Political Theory: Reconceptualizing Democracy and Rights in the European Polity

Abstract

In the globalized world, the European Union (EU) represents a political a transition from the ontology of the nation-state to a so-called post-Wesfalian order which is based on forms of shared sovereignties. As a result, attempts at conceptualizing the EU reflect intellectual and institutional efforts to adapt the old political vocabulary of the Modern Era to contemporary political experiments and ontologies, such as the EU, where the concepts and institutions of modern democratic theory are being reappraised and redesigned.

The aim of my paper is to discuss whether basic concepts and institutions of liberal democracy, such as representation and parliamentarism, are being revitalized in the EU, or the latter is leading to a post-democratic era –of technocratic governance, bureaucratization and judicialization of politics–. Given the rise of populist and nationalist politics throughout Europe, it seems worth exploring how to offset and tackle the anti-liberal democratic turn taking place in the continent, precisely by redefining and reinventing the language of democracy and rights, that is, of liberal democracy, the rule of law and citizenship, in the EU.