The question regarding the democratic deficit has been a heavily debated issue for decades and is still present in contemporary literature. In the light of Brexit and the increase of Euroscepticism around the continent, the question regarding democracy is essential for the European union to obtain legitimacy. This essay aims to address the democratic deficit as a concept, the Lisbon treaty’s efforts to reduce the democratic deficit, and finally, examine if the democratic deficit has been reduced as a result to the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon.  The study identifies the issue regarding the democratic deficit in five major subjects; demos, integration, participation, transparency and accountability. Many of the efforts helps reducing the deficit in some regards, but never to a full extent. The ordinary legislative procedure, the citizen’s initiative, the of granting more power to national parliaments, more transparency and assuring protection of human rights by law makes the EU more democratic, but not fully.  The issue regarding accountability, participation and especially transparency remains a problem, despite the Treaty of Lisbon’s efforts. This study shows that some parts of the EU simply can’t be made more democratic.

During the last centuries the alleged democratic deficit in the European Union has been discussed within the area of European studies. This deficit is, according to previous research, present on the national political arena where parties fail to discuss European issues. To describe the democratic link between national political parties and their voters, this essay answers the following question: How do the Swedish political parties discuss issues concerning the European Union in their manifestos for the Swedish parliamentary election of 2018? This is answered by a text analysis of the election manifestos of the Swedish parliamentary parties of 2018. The result is that the “second-order national elections”-hypothesis fail to explain the discussion about EU on the Swedish political arena. Furthermore, the essay finds that the Swedish parliamentary parties to a large extent act as predicted by the theory regarding “issue evolution” presented by Hobolt and de Vries.

EU förknippas ofta med en svag relation mellan väljare och valda politiker, samtidigt som att EU forskare har en diskussion kring huruvida organisationen kännetecknas av bristande demokrati. Brutna vallöften är främsta orsaken till minskat förtroende för politiker och således en försvagad demokrati. Detta då de valda politikerna skall representera väljarnas åsikter som är centralt i representativ demokrati vilket kännetecknar Europaparlamentet. Europaparlamentet är EU:s enda folkvalda instans vars främsta uppdrag är att föra fram medborgarnas politiska åsikter där vallöften har en central del i relationen. Tidigare forskning kring vallöften har främst berört nationella val. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka om de svenska partierna Kristdemokraterna och Socialdemokraterna uppfyllde sina utlovade vallöften i EU-valet år 2009 samt att se om dessa partier påverkar demokratin i någon bemärkelse. Studien är en kvalitativ innehållsanalys där båda partiernas vallöften analyseras utifrån mandat-, ansvars-, representations- och frihetsmodellerna som utgångspunkter för att undersöka om vallöftena uppfyllts. Valmanifesten som innehåller vallöftena jämförs med de dokumenterade uttalandena i plenarsammanträden ledamöterna gjort under mandatperioden år 2009 till år 2014. Socialdemokraterna uppfyllde merparten av sina vallöften och intog en stark representativ ställning vad gäller ledamöternas sätt att bedriva politik. Kristdemokraterna uppfyllde även merparten av vallöftena, samtidigt som ledamoten för partiet intog både en representativ och en frihetsställning i sina politiska handlingar.

Abstract The aim of this article is to examine how members of the European Parliament (MEPs) framed the debate on the introduction of transnational lists for the elections to the European Parliament. Transnational lists would allow candidates on a list to be elected from the Union as a single constituency, unlike today, where the member states are divided into separate constituencies. Previous research has mainly focused on an older, similar piece of legislation, introduced by former liberal MEP Andrew Duff, or performed minor empirical tests on how citizens would react to transnational lists being implemented. Hence, I aim to fill a gap in the existing literature and provide a deeper understanding of the subject, as well as how political actors position themselves against each other while debating this. I watched three separate debates in the European Parliament on the subject and transcribed every speech from the debates and created a coding schedule (available on request at john.hultengard (at) Hotmail.com), where I could code each speech as being pro, against or not taking a stance on the issue. By using a frame analysis and a qualitative text analysis as methods, I was able to find an overarching pattern, where I discovered that the EPP, ECR, ENF and non-partisan MEPs joined forces against the Greens, ALDE and S&D, where the first coalition eventually came to win the vote on the issue. The pro-block tended to argue that there is a lack of a public sphere in the EU, and that the transnational lists would be a solution to this issue. The opponents of the idea claimed that transnational lists would weaken the link between citizens and elected MEPs, and hence the solution was to not introduce transnational lists. The two main political groups, EPP and S&D, experienced major internal divisions on the issue. Further research on this subject is necessary to give a clearer picture of the debate. Key words: Transnational lists, European Parliament, party groups, AFCO, democratic deficit, frame analysis.

Valdeltagande är ett beforskat område. Vad gäller valdeltagande i EU har mycket forskning kretsat kring det låga valdeltagandet och i synnerhet att förklara varför det har sjunkit sedan första valet till Europaparlamentet 1979. Samtidigt har det förts en debatt inom litteraturen om EU:s demokratiska underskott och dess koppling till valdeltagandet. Följande uppsats tar avstamp i EU:s demokratiska underskott och undersöker huruvida spetskandidatprocessens betydelse och väljarnas uppfattade politiska inflytande år 2018 påverkar deras benägenhet att rösta i EU-val. Tidigare forskning om spetskandidatprocessen har främst fokuserat på valdeltagandet 2014 och hur kännedom om de olika kandidaterna påverkade väljarnas benägenhet att delta. Den här studien lägger fokus på hur väljarnas värdering av spetskandidatprocessen påverkar deras benägenhet att rösta. Vidare undersöks om det finns en koppling mellan väljarnas uppfattade politiska inflytande i EU, det vill säga huruvida de anser att de kan påverka den politiska riktningen eller inte, och deras benägenhet att rösta samt hur denna relation ser ut. Med eurobarometer data som underlag har en logistisk regressionsanalys genomförts för att uppskatta den marginella nyttan av att delta i val. Resultatet av undersökning visar att både graden av spetskandidatprocessens betydelse och väljarnas uppfattade politiska inflytande har en statistiskt signifikant effekt på benägenheten att delta i val och således den marginella nyttan av att rösta.

<p>The legitimacy of the European Union is being questioned, and this has put focus on the democratic deficit, as the main reason for the negative outcome of the referendum about implementing the last initiated treaties of the union. In this essay the credibility of the problem solving strategy through the communication policy of the commission is being put under the scope. The objective is to treat the credibility of the solution to the main problems of the EU as an important part of how the democratic, political system works and how it deals with taking care of its’ supporting and demanding channels of communication. The importance of a citizen platform to form common interests and a strictly European dialogue using media, common debates and several other possible ways to advocate this solution throughout the whole union is stressed here.</p>

The legitimacy of the European Union is being questioned, and this has put focus on the democratic deficit, as the main reason for the negative outcome of the referendum about implementing the last initiated treaties of the union. In this essay the credibility of the problem solving strategy through the communication policy of the commission is being put under the scope. The objective is to treat the credibility of the solution to the main problems of the EU as an important part of how the democratic, political system works and how it deals with taking care of its’ supporting and demanding channels of communication. The importance of a citizen platform to form common interests and a strictly European dialogue using media, common debates and several other possible ways to advocate this solution throughout the whole union is stressed here.

This essay focus on the European Union and its democracy both from a national perspec­tive and from an international perspective. Furthermore, the essay center on the con­cept of democratic deficit, this in order to study the European Union´s status regarding the democratic legitimacy. This study intends to nuance the problems that previous research and previous researchers have de­fined as democratic deficits in the European Union and ends up in conducting a textual anal­ysis of the latest European Union treaty, the Lisbon Treaty. The aim is that by using previous research on the democratic deficit in the European Union examine whether the Lisbon Treaty has enhanced the EU's position regarding democratic legitimacy. In other words, my study aims to identify what the deficit is and if it exists. The results show that the Lisbon Treaty has been trying to improve the democratic legitimacy and that some practical adjustments have been made, but it also show that there is much that still can be improved before citizens have full democratic rights.

Swedish local governments participate in different forms of intermunicipal cooperation in particular policy fields to achieve benefits of scale. This is often thought to improve efficiency and/or facilitate recruitment of experts and other competent personnel, aspects which are considered deficient in many municipalities as a consequence of demographical changes. Intermunicipal cooperation has become a widely used measure to face these challenges.However, there is little empirical evidence supporting that benefits of scale are realized – and the many forms of cooperation municipalities participate in is considered to affect local governments’ democratic anchorage negatively due to the principal-agent problem that arises. In this essay the effects of intermunicipal cooperation have been studied in an explorative way, with both quantitative and qualitative methods. Firstly, the effects on efficiency and need of additional personnel are examined with descriptive statistics from local government environmental inspection (food safety). Secondly, interviews have been conducted with local politicians and local government head officials exploring how the democratic deficit arising from intermunicipal cooperation is perceived from a transaction cost perspective. The interviewees represent a total of four municipalities (medium or small sized), two of which engage in a joint committee in local government environmental authority (which includes food control), the other two engage in a joint administration in the same policy field.The findings from the descriptive statistical analysis does not give solid evidence of improved efficiency or improved organizational competencies. However, the interviewees percieve these aspects as improved by intermunicipal cooperation. The findings from the qualitative approach is that the democratic deficit is perceived as problematic by the local politicians, but that several circumstances influence how problematic it really is. If the municipality needs cooperation to function, and the cooperation delivers satisfactory service, the principal-agent problem is more likely to be tolerated by the principal i.e. the citizens. Other factors seem to matter as well, factors such as: which policy field the cooperation is conducted, if the service is kept in the municipality’s vicinity, and if there is trust between the cooperating municipalities.