Theorizing the Normative Identity of the EU Polity: Social Substrate and Political Regime

Abstract

Ever since its establishment, the nature of the EU polity has been subject to extensive debate. Much of the complexity of this debate is caused by the fact that that we cannot simply assume the EU to rely on a well-integrated people. The democratic legitimacy of the EU regime has consequently been problematized. This panel explores the relationship between the EU polity’s social substrate on the one hand and its political regime on the other. This sensitivity reflects a broader trend in legal and political theory, which argues that constituent power and constituted power stand in a dynamic relationship and that the two need to be theorized in tandem. It is exactly this dynamic interaction which this panel proposes as a theoretical framework for understanding the normative identity of the EU polity. Accordingly, the papers tackle the EU’s identity through two analytical lenses, constituent power and constituted power, that correspond to two sets of questions. The first set of questions enquires into the appropriate conception of the social substrate of the EU polity: the constituent power. How should we conceive of the European people or peoples? The second set of questions focuses on the kind of democratic regime appropriate to the EU polity: the constituted power. These papers propose institutional regimes that the EU should adapt to attain democratic legitimacy. The panel thus puts the dialectical relationship between constituent and constituted power at the core of theorising Europe’s normative identity. As such, it takes serious that Europe’s normative identity is not a deterministic product of either citizens’ relationships within Europe’s societies (and arguably across them) nor simply the logical consequence of a particular political regime. The dialectical perspective between substrate and regime that emerges from these papers offers a more sophisticated understanding of the EU polity.

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