This study examines young Swedes’ support for democracy. Previous research suggests that many young people in Sweden are sceptical about the democratic governance as well as with democracy itself. However, there is a lack of qualitative studies within the subject - leaving the research field consisting of limited questionnaires. For a broader understanding, the study aims to go into depth with a qualitative semi-structured interview design. By applying the theory of postmaterialism carried out by Robert Inglehart, it is possible to gain an understanding of Sweden’s youth and their value orientation which might influence the support for democracy. The interviews were conducted with eight upper secondary school students at the Rudbeck school in Sollentuna, thereafter transcribed and thematically analyzed. The results are systematically divided into several categories, revolving around democracy as a state of governance and its principles, political participation and the functioning of democracy. The study finds that there is a discrepancy in supporting democracy in principle and instrumentally, among the participants. While there is a strong support for democracy as a form of governance as well as democratic principles, there is also criticism towards the government, the efficiency of the system, its availability and political institutions. The results are discussed and understood from a post-materialistic perspective, deepen our understanding of young individuals relationship with democracy.

The last 15 years has exemplified severe deficiencies in the institutional design of the European Union (EU). The EU suffers from a democratic deficit, which is demonstrated in the neglect if citizens preferences and their influence on decision making processes. This democratic deficit impacts not only the authority and legitimacy of the union but raises concerns between the EU and the world. The democratic deficit remains because of the lack of a European public sphere (EPS), an element which Habermas argues is necessary for democracy development. While previous research has found evidence for its existence in social networks and masss-media, this study broadens the field and investigates the potential existence if an EPS in a physical political network, namely the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). By conducting a quantitative content analysis, the study reveals clear indications of an EPS within the committee in which it is highly engaged in. Their engagement in the sphere is crucial to increase influence and power, as their engagement can decrease the democratic deficit, increase the legitimacy of the EU, and favour smooth cooperation between the member states, and between the EU and the world.

<p>During the last two decades the citizens’ trust in the European Union (EU) has decreased. It has been established that the Union suffer from a democratic deficit which has caused it to impose so called “identity-policies”. There is a need for the citizens to identify with the Union as a foundation of its legitimacy. But there is a problem since there is no clear idea of who constitutes “the people” in the European case.</p><p>Democratic theory presupposes a demos and a polity. The problem of the EU is that there are difficulties defining the ‘demos’ – there are difficulties identifying ‘the people’. The fact that the EU is in a situation where it has to deal with ‘peoples’ instead of a ‘people’ (demoi instead of demos) makes it more difficult since demos is closely related to the ‘nation’. Only nations may have states, thus the EU may not have a state. Hence it is difficult for the EU to conceptualize a demos, and without a demos there cannot be democracy. By arguing in this way the great need to create a ‘peoples’ Europe’ is understandable.</p><p>The thesis will concentrate on why there is a lack of a demos, or a “We-feeling”, within the Union, why this is a source of anxiety, and what possibly could unite the Union.</p><p>Attempts have been made to create a ‘European’ identity through constitution-making (however, a new constitution was recently rejected) and citizenship rights. The Union has also adopted a number of symbols to facilitate the citizens in identifying with the Union. Most of these symbols have been similar to those of the memberstates, thus, the Union has tried to use the methods of nation-building to overcome the legitimacy problem. Still, there is a lack of uniqueness of the Union. This may be for various reasons. Institution-building and constitution-making cannot alone provide democratic legitimacy; social practice and contestation must be included. This should take place in a public sphere but, in order to ‘have’ a public sphere, there must be a certain degree of collective identification.</p><p>It has also been claimed that there is a ‘European’ culture stemming from three ancient treasure houses (the ancient Near East, the ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire). Since culture is based on norms, i.e. customs, attitudes, beliefs, and values of a society, it is of importance to the Union when this is what politics are based on.</p><p>The study of this topic is relevant since the EU has an increased impact on the lives of its citizens, yet troubles to reach them. There is a lack of communication between the Union and its citizens and the democratic deficit becomes more and more obvious. The methods used by the Union do not seem successful and the issue of a European identity has become a source of anxiety.</p>

Submitted by Elesbão Santiago Neto (neto10uepb@cche.uepb.edu.br) on 2016-10-25T17:00:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 PDF - Anna Beatriz Leite Henriques.pdf: 2031474 bytes, checksum: 86ae7c77f5882000eb6b8dd3e35e2542 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-25T17:00:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 PDF - Anna Beatriz Leite Henriques.pdf: 2031474 bytes, checksum: 86ae7c77f5882000eb6b8dd3e35e2542 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-25 / CAPES / The main goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the decision making process of the European Union during the eurozone crisis has deepened its democratic deficit between 2008 and 2014. The historical and institutional evolution of the EU together w ith the gradual transfer of competences from the domestic sphere to the supranacional one have raised academic and popular suspicion (HIX e FØLLESDAL, 2006; AZMAN, 2001; JOLLY, 2013) about how democratic and legitimate were the decisions taken by the EU. In the context of the global financial turmoil initiated in 2008 with the Lehman Brothers ‟ s declaration of bankruptcy , it did not take long until the European Union started to feel the effects of this major financial crisis, which shed light into an even d eeper problem: the crisis of the eurodemocracy. In this sense, this dissertation aims to analyze how the EU‘s decision making to refrain the crisis has deepened its democratic d e ficit between 2008 and 2014. The hypothesis is that the EU, during the eurozon e crisis, concentrated its decision making process in the hands of indirectly elected political actors and of the wealthiest member states. In order confirm that, it will briefly present the institucional setup and the decision ma k ing process of the EU, as well as the academic debate regarding the existence of such demoratic d e ficit. The second section will cover the global financial crisis and how it affected Europe, leading to the emergence of the so called european sovereign debt crisis. The third sectio n will present the new architecture of the EU emerged to contain the crisis, especially the new fiscal transfers mechanisms, the new institutional framework and the European Central Bank‘s new role. The fourth and final section will aggregate the previousl y presented data and analyze them in the light of Føllesdal and Hix‘s (2006) systematization of the democratic deficit. Th is dissertation will delineate the causal pathway that led the EU to use technocratic resources to adopt crisis contention policies an d to concentrate its decision making processes in unelected Executive and suprana tional actors. It will also demonstrate how the EU lost its legitimacy and democratic accountability, both in relation to the (lack of) popular participation, the (poor) polit ical outcomes and also in relation to the very political process who lead to the adoption of all these measures. / O objetivo precípuo dessa dissertação é demonstrar de que forma a tomada de decisão da União E uropeia durante a crise da Zona do Euro aprofundou o seu déficit democrático entre os anos de 2008 e 2014. A evolução histórica e institucional da UE , concomitante à gradual transferência de competências da esfera interna para a supranacional, levantou questionamentos da academia (HIX e FØLLESDAL, 2006; AZMAN, 2001; JOLLY, 2013) e dos cidadãos a respeito do quão democráticas e legítimas seriam a s políticas discutidas e/ou adotadas pela UE. No contexto do revés financeiro mundial iniciado em 2008 com a quebra do Banco Lehman Brothers , nos EUA, a Europa não demorou a sentir os efeitos da crise que, além de afetar as grandes e conomias europeias, evidenciou que a maior crise talvez não fosse a do euro, mas sim a da eurodemocracia . Dessa forma, a presente proposta tem como objetivo analisar de que forma a tomada de decisão para conter a crise aprofundou o défic it democrático da UE entre os anos de 2008 e 2014. A hipótese é a de que, durante a crise, a UE concentrou a tomada de decisão nas mãos de atores políticos indiretamente eleitos e dos Estados membros com maior poderio financeiro. Em um primeiro momento , s e rá apresentada brevemente a estrutura institucional e o processo decisório da UE, bem como o debate acadêmico acerca da existência ou não de déficit democrático. O segundo capítulo versará sobre a crise financeira mundial e como ela verberou na Europa, ger ando a chamada crise do endividamento soberano europeu . O terceiro capítulo abordará a nova arquitetura emergida na UE para conter a crise, em especial os mecanismos para transferências fiscais, a nova arquit etura institucional e o novo papel do Banco Cent ral. Por fim, o quarto capítulo agregará os dados expostos nas seções anteriores e analisará a reação europeia à crise à luz da sistematizaçãoo do déficit democrático feita por Føllesdal e Hix (2006). Ser á demonstrado o caminho causal que levou a UE a usar recursos tecnocráticos para adotar medidas impopulares de contenção à crise e a concentrar sua tomada de decisão em atores Executivos e instituições supranacionais indiretamente eleitas. Em decorrência disso , houve perda de legitimidade e accountability d emocrático da UE, tanto em relação à participação popular, quanto aos resultados políticos e ao processo político que deu origem a essas políticas.

The European Union is suffering from a legitimacy crisis, which thus far has culminated with Great Britain’s decision to exit the union. According to the ‘opposition deficit thesis’, this is caused as there is no arena in which effective opposition can be voiced in the European Union, which forces EU citizens to organise their opposition outside the political system, and often against it. However, as no systemic analysis has been conducted on the opposition deficit in the EU’s democratic centre, no convincing conclusions has been made. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to systemically test the opposition deficit thesis, and to add to the current lack of research on the topic. The centre for any democratic legitimacy is the political system’s elected representatives in parliament, in which any opposition deficit would strongly indicate a democratic deficit. Therefore, I ask: is the European Parliament an arena for effective opposition? To test the opposition deficit systematically and empirically, data from 20 plenary debates between the years 2005-2007 in the European Parliament were gathered. Through simple statistical analysis, we conclude that most statements are oppositional (55 percent) and that there is no oppositional deficit. While most opposition is effective and thus has real effect in the policy-making process, the definition and operationalisation provided within the opposition deficit thesis must be refuted due to theoretical inconsistencies. Furthermore, oppositional behaviour at party- and individual level was also investigated, showing that Eurosceptic party groups are more oppositional than mainstream party groups and through their opposition minimise the European Union’s democratic deficit when voiced within the system. Also, we find that there is no significant relationship between gender and political opposition, contrary to past assumptions. Therefore, it is concluded that there is no oppositional deficit in the European Parliament, and possibly no such deficit in the European Union. So, while the European Union it is suffering a legitimacy crisis which may be caused by a democracy deficit, it is not correlated to political opposition as described by the opposition deficit thesis.

The focus of this thesis is on the vertical Europeanisation of the online public debate and more specifically on the EU's online public communication strategy, i.e. the top-down process of the unmediated, direct, online communication between the EU and the general public. The empirical data has been collected in four stages, namely public communication policy-making; public communication policy implementation online; online public communication policy impact on key Internet audiences; and interviews with key senior Commission officials. The review of the EU public communication documents has shown that the Commission has unambiguously committed to facilitate direct communication with the EU public as part of the process of building the EU citizens' trust towards its institutions and in addressing the issues of transparency and democratic legitimation of the EU's decision-making process, while the Internet is seen as a key tool in facilitating direct communication. However, after monitoring three of the EU's official websites for a year and analyzing the views of 221 Internet users on the EU's Information and Communication strategy online, it has become evident that the Commission has not yet fulfilled these commitments. The interviews with key Commission officials have revealed that behind this gap between policy and online implementation lie: a) an institutional culture which conflicts with the aims of the Commission's public communication strategy; and b) constant institutional restructuring in the last six years. Very recently the Commission has begun to address some of the shortfalls in the online implementation of its public communication strategy, yet there is no indication that the results of the online debate regarding the EU's future will be incorporated in the decision-making process, while further study is required in the future in order to assess any change in the institutional culture in relation to its public communication strategy.

The topic of this dissertation is the democratic deficit of the European Union and the normative and empirical assessment of the likelihood that the existing forms of institutionalized transnational civic engagement would act as the point of anchoring democratic practices at the EU level. If the democratic deficit reflects the apparent lack of legitimacy and accountability of EU institutions and a lack of influence of its citizens, the question the project attempts to answer is why the existing democratic innovations within the EU constitutional framework fail to attract political allegiance and mobilization necessary for a functioning EU democracy? The thesis attempts to bridge the gap between normative political theory and more empirical and policy oriented approaches to the issue of EU democratic deficit. In a theoretical sense, this research covers a broad spectrum of topics within political theory and the theory of political culture. Parting ways with most of the current literature on the subject, which usually ends with institutional prescriptions derived from descriptions that rely on the nation-state as the benchmark for the prospects of democratisation of the EU, the project seeks to analyse the democratic innovations that the Lisbon treaty introduced within a more comprehensive framework of transnational deliberative democracy - demoicracy. The underlying idea behind the project is to apply, for the first time and with necessary modifications, the basic notions of the founders of the discipline of Political Culture, Almond and Verba, to the EU. That means to draw on their seminal work, ‘The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations’, and hypothesize that further democratization of EU decision-making requires a 'civic political culture'. By definition, it presupposes the dominance of 'participative' over 'subject' and 'parochial' dimensions of orientation towards the political system. After extensive theoretical and methodological considerations, following a brief investigation into political culture in the EU, the empirical focus shifts to the European Citizens’ Initiative and the framings around the struggle for its reform in order to draw findings on which types of political cultures the European Commission has fostered. The principle aim of the research is to investigate if and how the democratic legitimacy of the EU can be enhanced by a shift from a parochial and subject to a more participation-enhancing dynamics. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

O presente estudo propõe-se a investigar o potencial de o projeto de democracia cosmopolita, tal como formulado por David Held, Anthony McGrew e Daniele Archibugi, suprir o déficit democrático das instituições representativas brasileiras decorrente dos fenômenos da globalização e do policentrismo do poder, no contexto da atual crise econômica mundial. Trata-se, pois, de se contrapor o modelo cosmopolita, de caráter transterritorial, ao modelo representativo, de base territorial. A pesquisa segue um plano analítico político-jurídico, ou seja, sua sede epistemológica é a Teoria Geral do Estado. / This study wants to investigate the potential of the project of cosmopolitan democracy, how it was formulated by David Held, Anthony McGrew and Daniele Archibugi, to supply de democratic deficit of the Brazilians institutional organizations, occurred because the phenomenon of globalization and polycentrism of power, in the context of now global economic crisis. Therefore, we will compare the cosmopolitan model, of transterritorial character, and the representative model, based on the territory. This research follows a politic-juridical plan, so, its epistemological place is the General Theory of State.

A integração regional denominada Mercado Comum do Sul – MERCOSUL – gera um processo de transbordamento para diversos setores sociais dos países membros, induzido pela necessidade de minoração do déficit democrático, entendido como falta de representação e acesso às decisões do MERCOSUL e combinado com a falta de controle, de transparência e de responsabilização dos atores decisórios. A União Europeia, assim como o Parlamento Europeu, possui mecanismos que visam a minorar o déficit democrático existente na integração regional e podem servir de modelo para o MERCOSUL. A comparação entre a UE e o MERCOSUL, e entre o PARLASUL e o PE se utiliza de mecanismos de aproximação de teorias e de metodologias que possibilitam a análise comparada em nível histórico, institucional, jurídico e político. Ao longo da tese, foram analisadas as atribuições, o controle e a fiscalização, a legitimidade, a participação e a representação no PARLASUL e no PE. As principais fontes dos dados utilizados nesta tese são documentos, tratados e protocolos internacionais, regimentos, legislação e entrevistas realizadas com autoridades relacionadas com o MERCOSUL, especialmente parlamentares do PARLASUL. A utilização do capital social na integração regional pode minorar o déficit democrático e colaborar na criação e na consolidação de redes que qualificam e facilitam a participação e a ação política mais transparente e democrática. A utilização dos pressupostos da democracia pode diminuir a percepção negativa das populações dos países membros do MERCOSUL, em relação às instituições e aos partidos políticos. As proposições da presente tese refletem uma necessidade de adaptação da integração regional aos valores democráticos, representados pela democracia (mais) participativa. Um modelo institucional que indica uma maior participação da sociedade civil e das populações na integração regional, no escopo de minorar o alto déficit democrático existente, é viável a partir da eleição de parte dos representantes do PARLASUL com fortes vínculos associativos, com capital social legitimado e reconhecido socialmente. / The Regional integration known as the Southern Common Market - MERCOSUL, generates the spill over effect for various social sectors of the member countries induces the need for mitigation of the democratic deficit, understood as a lack of representation and access in the decisions of MERCOSUL, combined with the lack of control, transparency and accountability decision-making actors. The European Union, and the European Parliament have mechanisms to reduce the existing democratic deficit in regional integration, and can serve as a model for MERCOSUL. The comparison between the UE and MERCOSUL, and between PARLASUL and the European Parliament uses approaching mechanisms, theories and methodologies that enable comparative analysis in historical, institutional, legal and political level. Assignments were analyzed, control and oversight, legitimacy, participation and representation in PARLASUL and the European Parliament. The main sources of the data used in the thesis are documents, international treaties and protocols, regulations, legislation and interviews with related authorities with MERCOSUL, especially PARLASUL’s parliamentarians. The use of social capital in regional integration can reduce the democratic deficit and contribute to the creation and consolidation of networks that qualify and facilitate participation and more transparent and democratic political action. The use of democracy assumptions may decrease the negative perception of people in MERCOSUL member countries, the institutions, and political parties. Propositions of this thesis reflect a need for adaptation of regional integration to democratic values represented by democracy (more) participatory. An institutional model that indicates a greater involvement of civil society and populations in the regional integration, in scope to mitigate high existing democratic deficit, it is feasible from the part of election the representatives of PARLASUL with strong associative links, with the social capital legitimated and recognized socially.

European security and defence policy has developed at a significant rate since the late 1990s. As a growing field of analysis, there have been few studies to date that have explored the foreign and domestic implications of the European Union's emerging security and defence policies. This thesis seeks to assess the quality and effectiveness of the present day defence policies of the European Union through an examination of its commitment to civilian and military missions abroad. In so doing, this thesis suggests that these missions stem from a misguided belief that the promotion of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law beyond its border is the most effective means by which to achieve security within Europe. This thesis concludes that the economic and political tools available to the European Union provide a better means by which to ensure security in Europe and around the world.