Aspirations, Inputs and Performance

Legitimating the European Union

Legitimating the European Union focuses on notions of political legitimacy in the European Union. The book link legitimacy theory to the way in which the EU’s citizens experience and react to supranational forms of governance.

Since the early 1970s the EU has never been perceived to be as legitimate as it needed to be. Legitimating factors, such as the elections to the European Parliament or increasing European Parliament powers, have always lagged behind popular perceptions of what was needed at the time. Mather proposes that the EU suffers from a ‘legitimacy deficit’ and that, assuming the EU does not propose to be a dictatorship, this deficit matters.


Janet Mather is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is the author of The European Union and British Democracy: Towards Convergence, and a number of journal articles. She has also contributed chapters to books edited by Neill Nugent, Juliet Lodge and Michael O’Neill amongst others.

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Author: Janet Mather
• Language: English
• Type: Hardback

Price: 69.00 €

Price is exclusive shipping costs. For sales inside Belgium 6% VAT is added to the book price.