"Legitimising European integration: Perspectives and discourses of legitimacy in the European Union"

In the would-be policy of the European Union (EU), legitimacy is experienced as a problematical phenomenon. It is frequently treated as synonymous with 'democracy,' yet the EU's design is such that, in theory, legitimacy in the EU derives not only from formal, democratic representation, but from norms of rationality, efficiency and bureaucracy. This paper marshals and classifies the existing and contrasting politico-legal approaches to legitimacy in the EU context with the aim of establishing a set of parameters according to which the legitimacy of the EU's institutions, and the integration process and its outcomes, can be both appraised and compared with the legitimation of politics in other political systems