c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Political representation in the European Parliament

The political structure of the European Union is experiencing a period of crit-ical change, as leaders seek to address the twin problems of the ‘democratic deficit ’ and institutional effectiveness in the Intergovernmental Conference. Problems of governance, already serious, have become more urgent, and will be further compounded by increasing EU powers and subsequent waves of European enlargement. The widely recognised danger is that the expansion of the European Union will be threatened by a growing crisis of democratic legit-imation and of effective governance (Andersen & Eliassen 1996; Hayward 1995). All the articles in this special issue focus on the relationship between citizens and Members of the European Parliament. The aim is to examine the effectiveness of alternative channels of representation, and the way weak linkages contribute towards the democratic deficit within the Union. To understand the problems of democratic legitimacy in the Union we need to unpack the concept of ‘political representation’, which has a num-ber of multifaceted and complex dimensions (Thomassen 1994; Holmber