Democratic decision-making in the EU: Technocracy in Disguise?

This book examines the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU) legislation and takes stock of the democratic credentials of the EU's main decision-making procedure the ordinary legislative procedure as it was renamed in the Lisbon Treaty. The author provides a systematic, conceptually and empirically anchored assessment of the conditions under which the EU reaches its decisions and whether these conditions comply with criteria for democratic decision-making. Through the perspective of deliberative democracy, the ordinary legislative procedure is assessed for its possible democratic qualities or lack thereof according to normative criteria which are operationalised into empirical indicators. The book assesses and discusses the conditions for democratic input in co-decision-making with five empirical chapters each addressing the ordinary legislative procedure from different dimensions: democratic deliberative forums, inclusion, openness, power neutralising mechanisms and decision-making capacity. Filling a gap in EU legislative studies and contributing to the debate on the European democratic deficit, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, legislative studies and deliberative democracy.