Christopher Lord
Biographic Data
| ID | 3745382 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Lord |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Lord |
| SIGNATURE | LORD C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1963-8541 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 499 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Reconciling the Interconnectedness and Autonomy of European Union Democracies
A Passionate Clarity
KEYWORDS: LegitimacyDemocratic Audit Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsChristopher LordChristopher Lord is professor at ARENA, the Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. He is the author of several books and academic articles on Democracy, Legitimacy and the European Union.Michael SawardMichael Saward is professor of Politics and Internati…
Referendums and Democratic Theory
Autonomy or Domination? Two Faces of Differentiated Integration
When is differentiated integration (DI) of the European Union a source of autonomy and when is it a source of domination? Much depends on what collective goods member state democracies seek through integration. Club goods often require member state democracies to form DIs of their choice. Public goods and common resource goods may, in contrast, require limits on DI if member state democracies are to meet their own obligations to their own publics…
No epistocracy without representation? The case of the European Central Bank
I argue the European Central Bank shows how mutually defining are i) the epistemic assumptions of independent central banking; ii) the powers of a central bank; iii) the political order in which it operates and iv) representative claims. I identify three ‘representative turns’ whose effects have cumulated over the history of the ECB: the first towards including representative claims in justifications for independent central banking; the second, t…
The European Parliament
This paper asks whether the distinction between a working and a debating parliament can help us understand how the European Parliament (EP) can contribute to the legitimacy of European Union (EU) law-making. The paper discusses normative standards, practical challenges and institutional choices the EP faces in developing as either a working or a debating parliament. It sketches the particular configuration of working and debating parliament the E…
The Uk and European “Centre Formation” From 1950 to Brexit
It might be thought that Brexit is just a case of the UK getting honest with itself and its partners. On that interpretation, much British opinion never really accepted European integration. Hence, the UK should never have joined a body committed to an “ever closer Union between the peoples of Europe.” Yet, I argue, the relationship of the UK to the process of European integration has been complex and paradoxical. As a member of the EU, the UK pr…
The legitimacy of exits from the European Union
Justifications for extending the Union’s boundaries to include new Member States have been much discussed. Only since the Brexit referendum have justifications for shrinking the Union’s boundaries through withdrawals of Member States received the same attention. This paper uses concepts of historical responsibility to ask whether decisions Member States take together constrain the manner in which any one of them can justifiably exit the Union? It…
How can Parliaments Contribute to the Legitimacy of the European Semester
This article develops a standard for evaluating how parliaments can contribute to the legitimacy of the European semester. It then uses that standard to identify where national parliaments may be able to oversee the semester through their relationships to their own governments and where that solution may, conversely, be insufficient. The article uses that analysis to raise four questions. Firstly, what powers over the semester should be exericed …
An indirect legitimacy argument for a directly elected European Parliament
Can a directly elected European Parliament help deliver standards by which the European Union can be indirectly legitimated through its component national democracies? This article argues that the Union can be indirectly legitimate where it helps member state democracies meet their own obligations to their own publics. The Union can do just that by managing externalities in ways needed to secure core values of justice, democracy and freedom from …
Parallel Cultures
Assessing actually-existing trajectories of EU politicisation
Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This rev…
Differentiated integration in the European Union
Differentiation has been a feature of European integration for more than two decades. Nowadays, more than half of European Union (EU) policies are now implemented in different ways. Recent debates over a potential British exit from the EU revived discussions on the future of European integration, offering a potential case for disintegration. Yet scholars and practitioners still find it difficult to define the notion. The introduction to this coll…
Utopia or dystopia? Towards a normative analysis of differentiated integration
Few attempts have been made to develop a systematic normative analysis of where differentiated integration may need justification, and by what standards. This contribution argues that differentiated integration should be evaluated by a standard of how far it improves the management of externalities. That standard allows for disagreement at the European level on what values best justify choices between differential and uniform integration.\nYet it…
The Pitfalls of Representation as Claims-Making in the European Union 1
Standard accounts assume that representatives are authorised and held accountable through elections in territorially defined constituencies. In contrast, claims-making approaches hold that representation does not always depend on an electoral connection. This paper argues that the claims-making approach addresses some of the difficulties in the standard account, but remains itself theoretically underspecified. This becomes especially clear when a…
No representation without justification? Appraising standards of justification in European Parliament debates
Much is known about the voting behaviour of representatives in the European Parliament. However, less has been done to investigate the role of the European Parliament in ‘speaking up’ for different points of view. This contribution uses a philosophical analysis of the role of justification in representation to propose standards that can be used to evaluate the quality of justification in legislative bodies. It then applies those standards to a st…
The politics of justification? Applying the ‘Discourse Quality Index’ to the study of the European Parliament
In this paper, we apply a revised version of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) developed by Steenbergen et al . to European Parliament (EP) debates. This updated measurement instrument, after the inclusion of new indicators, helps us identify not just the principles of European Union (EU) deliberation but most importantly the favourable contextual conditions of supranational deliberation. We illustrate the new DQI coding for selected debates over…
Unequal but democratic? Equality according to Karlsruhe
In its Lisbon ruling, the German Constitutional Court claims that the ‘formation of a government with the powers of a state’ from within the European Parliament would require its seats to be apportioned in a strict relationship to the share of each member state in the population of the Union. In reaching this conclusion, the Court distinguishes between the equal representation of whole democratic peoples and the equal representation of individual…
The democratic legitimacy of codecision
This contribution develops a framework for evaluating the legitimacy of codecision. It uses democratic theory to clarify the role of legislative procedures in securing the legitimacy of political systems. It shows how that role requires public control with political equality and public justification. It uses that standard to show how legislative agenda-setting, Council voting weights, European Parliament elections and seat apportionments, nationa…
The European Parliament and the legitimation of agencification
The European Parliament (EP) has often criticized the agencification of the European Union. Yet in practice it often uses its legislative powers to strengthen the powers and independence of European agencies. To explain this paradox, this paper analyses the six cases where the 2004–2009 EP legislated to create a new European agency. It argues that the Parliament overcame some of its doubts about agencification by proposing amendments which brough…
The political theory and practice of parliamentary participation in the Common Security and Defence Policy
This contribution develops normative arguments for the democratic and parliamentary control of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, on the Kantian assumption that ‘ought implies can’, it also tries to make a case for parliamentary control in the face of scepticism about parliamentary politics in general, the capacities of the European Parliament (EP) and national parliaments to exercise satisfactory levels of public control ove…
Polecats, lions, and foxes
It is often supposed that the European Union (EU) can be legitimated as a Pareto-improving bargain between its member states. This paper explores the assumptions of social choice and political philosophy that lie behind that claim. Starting out from a republican view that a polity needs to satisfy standards of non-arbitrariness if it is to be legitimate, the paper begins by explaining why ‘Coasian’ assumptions of Pareto improvement are so importa…
Legitimacy and the European Union
Most of the contemporary debates about the European Union - about its role, its institutional arrangements, its development dynamic, its expansion and possible futures - revolve around the issue of political legitimacy. Legitimacy and the European Union addresses the fundamental issues at the heart of the debates on Europe and examines such key questions as:- -What is the scope of the EU's authority -Is there a legitimacy deficit? If so, how much…
Representation and Accountability
Although representation and accountability require one another in modern democracy, there are many possible tensions between them. Democratic theories tend to combine the two but in ways that are not always obvious, and, depending on the institutional properties of a political system, varied ways of combining representation with accountability can amount to significant differences in the practice and quality of democracy. The authors review those…
The EU's many representative modes
At first glance the European Union's (EU's) compound form of representation allows a wide-ranging spectrum of actors to claim to be representative, and allows different channels to feed their demands and interests into the political system. While this may be understood as a redeeming feature of supranational politics, this article sounds a note of caution. The historically developed system of representation comprising different principles and pra…
Legitimizing the EU
This article argues that its character as a non‐state political system makes little difference to how the EU ought to be legitimated. Minimum requirements for the legitimation of the liberal democratic state (performance, democracy and identity) also hold for the legitimation of Union power, both normatively and sociologically. This constrains the application of innovative legitimation strategies to the Union, requiring that post‐parliamentary so…
Utopia or dystopia? Towards a normative analysis of differentiated integration
Few attempts have been made to develop a systematic normative analysis of where differentiated integration may need justification, and by what standards. This contribution argues that differentiated integration should be evaluated by a standard of how far it improves the management of externalities. That standard allows for disagreement at the European level on what values best justify choices between differential and uniform integration.\nYet it…
Differentiated integration in the European Union
Differentiation has been a feature of European integration for more than two decades. Nowadays, more than half of European Union (EU) policies are now implemented in different ways. Recent debates over a potential British exit from the EU revived discussions on the future of European integration, offering a potential case for disintegration. Yet scholars and practitioners still find it difficult to define the notion. The introduction to this coll…
The EU's many representative modes
At first glance the European Union's (EU's) compound form of representation allows a wide-ranging spectrum of actors to claim to be representative, and allows different channels to feed their demands and interests into the political system. While this may be understood as a redeeming feature of supranational politics, this article sounds a note of caution. The historically developed system of representation comprising different principles and pra…
The European Parliament
This paper asks whether the distinction between a working and a debating parliament can help us understand how the European Parliament (EP) can contribute to the legitimacy of European Union (EU) law-making. The paper discusses normative standards, practical challenges and institutional choices the EP faces in developing as either a working or a debating parliament. It sketches the particular configuration of working and debating parliament the E…
The Making of a President
THE SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT AND THE MAASTRICHT TREATY attempted to balance two principles of representation in their redesign of the institutional structures of the European Union: the one, based on the indirect representation of publics through nationally elected governments in the European Council and Council of Ministers; the other, based on the direct representation of publics through a more powerful European Parliament. There is much to be said …
Assessing actually-existing trajectories of EU politicisation
Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This rev…
The democratic legitimacy of codecision
This contribution develops a framework for evaluating the legitimacy of codecision. It uses democratic theory to clarify the role of legislative procedures in securing the legitimacy of political systems. It shows how that role requires public control with political equality and public justification. It uses that standard to show how legislative agenda-setting, Council voting weights, European Parliament elections and seat apportionments, nationa…
The politics of justification? Applying the ‘Discourse Quality Index’ to the study of the European Parliament
In this paper, we apply a revised version of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) developed by Steenbergen et al . to European Parliament (EP) debates. This updated measurement instrument, after the inclusion of new indicators, helps us identify not just the principles of European Union (EU) deliberation but most importantly the favourable contextual conditions of supranational deliberation. We illustrate the new DQI coding for selected debates over…
Still in democratic deficit
E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU
This article considers how a plurality of views on how the EU ought to be legitimated may even contribute to its overall legitimacy and not, as is often assumed, to its contestedness as a polity. It draws lessons for the EU from a recent turn in the literature on legitimacy towards analysing political systems as mechanisms for mediating between several views of legitimacy, rather than articulating any one. It identifies a range of views on how th…
The political theory and practice of parliamentary participation in the Common Security and Defence Policy
This contribution develops normative arguments for the democratic and parliamentary control of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, on the Kantian assumption that ‘ought implies can’, it also tries to make a case for parliamentary control in the face of scepticism about parliamentary politics in general, the capacities of the European Parliament (EP) and national parliaments to exercise satisfactory levels of public control ove…
A Democratic Audit of the European Union
What is a Democratic Audit? Auditing Democracy in the European Union Citizenship Consent Representation Accountability (The Commission) Accountability (Council) Constitutionalism, Democracy and the EU Conclusions Bibliography
No representation without justification? Appraising standards of justification in European Parliament debates
Much is known about the voting behaviour of representatives in the European Parliament. However, less has been done to investigate the role of the European Parliament in ‘speaking up’ for different points of view. This contribution uses a philosophical analysis of the role of justification in representation to propose standards that can be used to evaluate the quality of justification in legislative bodies. It then applies those standards to a st…
The European Parliament and the legitimation of agencification
The European Parliament (EP) has often criticized the agencification of the European Union. Yet in practice it often uses its legislative powers to strengthen the powers and independence of European agencies. To explain this paradox, this paper analyses the six cases where the 2004–2009 EP legislated to create a new European agency. It argues that the Parliament overcame some of its doubts about agencification by proposing amendments which brough…
An indirect legitimacy argument for a directly elected European Parliament
Can a directly elected European Parliament help deliver standards by which the European Union can be indirectly legitimated through its component national democracies? This article argues that the Union can be indirectly legitimate where it helps member state democracies meet their own obligations to their own publics. The Union can do just that by managing externalities in ways needed to secure core values of justice, democracy and freedom from …
How can Parliaments Contribute to the Legitimacy of the European Semester
This article develops a standard for evaluating how parliaments can contribute to the legitimacy of the European semester. It then uses that standard to identify where national parliaments may be able to oversee the semester through their relationships to their own governments and where that solution may, conversely, be insufficient. The article uses that analysis to raise four questions. Firstly, what powers over the semester should be exericed …
Representation and Accountability
Although representation and accountability require one another in modern democracy, there are many possible tensions between them. Democratic theories tend to combine the two but in ways that are not always obvious, and, depending on the institutional properties of a political system, varied ways of combining representation with accountability can amount to significant differences in the practice and quality of democracy. The authors review those…
Assessing Democracy in a Contested Polity
After reviewing difficulties with the literature on the democratic deficit, this article concludes that a method is needed for assessing democracy in a political system where there is fundamental agreement on what would constitute adequately democratic institutions. It then goes on to explore two suggestions for such a method: the development of well‐specified indicators of democratic performance for contrasting ideal‐types of Euro‐democracy; and…
The Pitfalls of Representation as Claims-Making in the European Union 1
Standard accounts assume that representatives are authorised and held accountable through elections in territorially defined constituencies. In contrast, claims-making approaches hold that representation does not always depend on an electoral connection. This paper argues that the claims-making approach addresses some of the difficulties in the standard account, but remains itself theoretically underspecified. This becomes especially clear when a…
Autonomy or Domination? Two Faces of Differentiated Integration
When is differentiated integration (DI) of the European Union a source of autonomy and when is it a source of domination? Much depends on what collective goods member state democracies seek through integration. Club goods often require member state democracies to form DIs of their choice. Public goods and common resource goods may, in contrast, require limits on DI if member state democracies are to meet their own obligations to their own publics…
What Role for Parties in Eu Politics
The argument of this article is that the EU occupies an under-conceptualised middle ground between a partyless political system and one that has parties of its own. It distinguishes those attributes of party politics that have developed in the European arena from those that have not. It then develops three alternative explanations for such a pattern of uneven development
The legitimacy of exits from the European Union
Justifications for extending the Union’s boundaries to include new Member States have been much discussed. Only since the Brexit referendum have justifications for shrinking the Union’s boundaries through withdrawals of Member States received the same attention. This paper uses concepts of historical responsibility to ask whether decisions Member States take together constrain the manner in which any one of them can justifiably exit the Union? It…
Unequal but democratic? Equality according to Karlsruhe
In its Lisbon ruling, the German Constitutional Court claims that the ‘formation of a government with the powers of a state’ from within the European Parliament would require its seats to be apportioned in a strict relationship to the share of each member state in the population of the Union. In reaching this conclusion, the Court distinguishes between the equal representation of whole democratic peoples and the equal representation of individual…
Polecats, lions, and foxes
It is often supposed that the European Union (EU) can be legitimated as a Pareto-improving bargain between its member states. This paper explores the assumptions of social choice and political philosophy that lie behind that claim. Starting out from a republican view that a polity needs to satisfy standards of non-arbitrariness if it is to be legitimate, the paper begins by explaining why ‘Coasian’ assumptions of Pareto improvement are so importa…
Sovereign or Confused? The ‘Great Debate’ about British Entry to the European Community 20 Years On
The Making of a President
THE SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT AND THE MAASTRICHT TREATY attempted to balance two principles of representation in their redesign of the institutional structures of the European Union: the one, based on the indirect representation of publics through nationally elected governments in the European Council and Council of Ministers; the other, based on the direct representation of publics through a more powerful European Parliament. There is much to be said …
Political Parties in the European Union
Political Parties in the European Union provides a comprehensive assessment of the importance of party politics to the functioning of the European Union which the authors argue has frequently been und
From Our Readers
From Our Readers
EU Foreign Policy Beyond the Nation-State
Assessing Democracy in a Contested Polity
After reviewing difficulties with the literature on the democratic deficit, this article concludes that a method is needed for assessing democracy in a political system where there is fundamental agreement on what would constitute adequately democratic institutions. It then goes on to explore two suggestions for such a method: the development of well‐specified indicators of democratic performance for contrasting ideal‐types of Euro‐democracy; and…
Legitimizing the EU
This article argues that its character as a non‐state political system makes little difference to how the EU ought to be legitimated. Minimum requirements for the legitimation of the liberal democratic state (performance, democracy and identity) also hold for the legitimation of Union power, both normatively and sociologically. This constrains the application of innovative legitimation strategies to the Union, requiring that post‐parliamentary so…
Comparing Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer as Presidents of the European Commission
This article compares the leadership skills that Jacques Delors (1985–1995) and Jacques Santer (1995–1999) brought to the presidency of the European Commission. It analyses challenges common to all presidents of the Commission, not least a wide range of disagreement as to exactly what their leadership role should be. It then goes on to qualify the received wisdom that Delors and Santer were ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ presidents respectively. Instead it …
What Role for Parties in Eu Politics
The argument of this article is that the EU occupies an under-conceptualised middle ground between a partyless political system and one that has parties of its own. It distinguishes those attributes of party politics that have developed in the European arena from those that have not. It then develops three alternative explanations for such a pattern of uneven development
The European Parliament, Not a Very European Parliament
This article distinguishes preference aggregation, identity formation and the deliberation of norms as three functions performed by parliaments in systems of representative government. It argues that analysis of ‘what kind of parliament is the European Parliament (EP) in comparison to others?’ has hitherto focused excessively on preference aggregation to the exclusion of the other two elements. In seeking to correct this it reaches an original as…
The European Parliament in the Economic Governance of the European Union
This article analyses how the European Parliament's contribution to policy outcomes varies across three branches of economic decision‐making and two roles typical of a parliamentary body. The former are based on Majone's distinction between stabilization, redistribution and regulation. The latter draw on Habermas's distinction between the role of the legislator in bargaining and preferences, and setting norms of collective action, which are taken…
E Pluribus Unum? Creative Disagreement about Legitimacy in the EU
This article considers how a plurality of views on how the EU ought to be legitimated may even contribute to its overall legitimacy and not, as is often assumed, to its contestedness as a polity. It draws lessons for the EU from a recent turn in the literature on legitimacy towards analysing political systems as mechanisms for mediating between several views of legitimacy, rather than articulating any one. It identifies a range of views on how th…
A Democratic Audit of the European Union
What is a Democratic Audit? Auditing Democracy in the European Union Citizenship Consent Representation Accountability (The Commission) Accountability (Council) Constitutionalism, Democracy and the EU Conclusions Bibliography
Democracy in the New Europe
Introduction.- Democracy Within the State.- Varieties of Democracy Within the State.- Varieties of Democracy Beyond the State? The Case of the European Union.- Promoting Democracy in the New Europe.- Assessing Democracy in the New Europe.- Challenges to Democracy in the New Europe.- Democracy Within and Beyond the State: A Complementary Relationship
Democracy and the European Union
In justifying recent European Union Treaty changes, member-state governments have claimed that publics are doubly represented in the EU: through their elected governments and through the European Parliament. This review evaluates ‘dual representation’ as a means of delivering democratic standards. It concludes that present institutional arrangements contain some means of aligning policy outcomes with citizen preferences but they do not match up s…
Contested Meanings, Democracy Assessment and the European Union
"Democracy in a "Regional State
In recent years, it has become fashionable to deny that a democratic deficit exists in the European Union. “Democratic deficit denial” takes various forms. According to one version, there is no deficit because the Union is more or less structured to ensure that new policy is only introduced when it suits the preferences of representatives of the overwhelming majority of the Union's policy addressees (Crombez 2003). According to a second view, EU …
Two constitutionalisms? A comparison of British and French government attempts to justify the Constitutional Treaty
One lesson of the failed Constitutional Treaty was that the European Union is unlikely to be an exception to a general rule that attempts to constitutionalize polities according to liberal democratic values provoke disagreement about the relative weight that should be given to the empowerment or the constraint of institutions. Just how that cleavage developed in practice is illustrated using a discourse analysis of attempts by the British and Fre…
Still in democratic deficit
Legitimacy and the European Union
Most of the contemporary debates about the European Union - about its role, its institutional arrangements, its development dynamic, its expansion and possible futures - revolve around the issue of political legitimacy. Legitimacy and the European Union addresses the fundamental issues at the heart of the debates on Europe and examines such key questions as:- -What is the scope of the EU's authority -Is there a legitimacy deficit? If so, how much…
Representation and Accountability
Although representation and accountability require one another in modern democracy, there are many possible tensions between them. Democratic theories tend to combine the two but in ways that are not always obvious, and, depending on the institutional properties of a political system, varied ways of combining representation with accountability can amount to significant differences in the practice and quality of democracy. The authors review those…
The EU's many representative modes
At first glance the European Union's (EU's) compound form of representation allows a wide-ranging spectrum of actors to claim to be representative, and allows different channels to feed their demands and interests into the political system. While this may be understood as a redeeming feature of supranational politics, this article sounds a note of caution. The historically developed system of representation comprising different principles and pra…
The European Parliament and the legitimation of agencification
The European Parliament (EP) has often criticized the agencification of the European Union. Yet in practice it often uses its legislative powers to strengthen the powers and independence of European agencies. To explain this paradox, this paper analyses the six cases where the 2004–2009 EP legislated to create a new European agency. It argues that the Parliament overcame some of its doubts about agencification by proposing amendments which brough…
The political theory and practice of parliamentary participation in the Common Security and Defence Policy
This contribution develops normative arguments for the democratic and parliamentary control of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). However, on the Kantian assumption that ‘ought implies can’, it also tries to make a case for parliamentary control in the face of scepticism about parliamentary politics in general, the capacities of the European Parliament (EP) and national parliaments to exercise satisfactory levels of public control ove…
Political science (42 works) · Law (38 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (37 works) · Politics (36 works) · Law (33 works) · European union (29 works) · Economics (28 works) · Sociology (24 works) · International trade (21 works) · Political economy (21 works)