THE DISCURSIVE DEFICIT :: Essays Papers

THE DISCURSIVE DEFICITMoravcsik and the atomic number 63an conjugation Sidentrops most fundamental errorone he shares with m whatsoever in the European debateis his assumption that the EU is a nation- express in the making, Andrew Moravcsik writes in his tyranny In Brussels? However, Moravcsik makes the same error himself, if a bit to a greater extent circuitously. In his articles Despotism In Brussels?, Federalism in the European kernel Rhetoric and Reality, and In Defense of the Democratic Deficit Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union, Moravcsik denies the existence of a antiauthoritarian deficit within the European Union. His claim itself, however, is not legitimate he attempts to legitimize to the European Union by granting it authority on the basis of state-based democratic standards while concurrently denying that the EU is, in fact, a democratic entity similar to the modern state. The European Union lacks every characteristic that grants a modern European stateits authority, Moravcsik states. Yet he asserts that constitutional checks and balances, indirect democratic control via topic governments, and the increasing powers of the European Parliament are sufficient to assure that the EU policymaking is, in nearly all cases, clean, transparent, effective, and politically responsive to demands of European citizens. This impudence relies heavily on what is the most salient characteristic of authority in the modern European statethe democratic systemto make any sense at all, and thus the contradiction in Moravcsiks credit line emerges. In order to examine the intricacies of this contradiction, we shall now analyze the three endemically democratic concepts that Moravcsik claims legitimize EU authority, his assertion that each is not part of a state structure as used by the EU, and his contradictory confirmation of these concepts by state-employed democratic principles. Constitutional checks and balances. Moravcsik c laims that the presence and use of the Treaty of capital of Italy as a stable, overarching structure of political authority in Europe should dispel Euroskeptics fears about the development of a European superstate. He fruit to assert that while a true Constitution does not (as yet) exist, a relatively firm de facto constitution for Europe does indeed exist. That constitution, he claims, is characterized by a set of substantive fiscal, administrative, legal, and procedural constraints on EU policymaking that lot to limit the EU in its policymaking power.