Whether and how the European Union can achieve democratic legitimacy is a heavily contested topic. This book contributes to the debate by reflecting on the spectrum of existing arguments from the viewpoint of political theory, and it presents a neo-republican perspective as a means to break the discursive deadlock.

Starting from the observation that the rift between the public and the scientific debates continues to widen, the book examines the dynamics of knowledge production in the field of European Union research. It presents the main democratic theories – liberal, communitarian and deliberative – used in the field and analyzes their background assumptions and their perspective on constructions of European governance. Each leaves certain questions unanswered, and none is able to elucidate the normative and institutional implications of the widespread political apathy towards the integration process. Therefore, the last part of the book develops a theoretical alternative to the standard accounts by showing how the republican approaches of Hannah Arendt and Philip Pettit can be combined to yield a fresh and enlightening view on the normative challenges of a postnational polity.