@article{article_1566, title={THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: THE ROLE SUPRANATIONAL PUBLIC SPHERE AND THE WELFARE STATE POLICIES}, journal={Marmara Üniversitesi Avrupa Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi}, volume={19}, pages={27–52}, year={2011}, DOI={10.29228/mjes.144}, author={Kırval, Levent and Kırval, Levent}, keywords={European Union, Legitimacy Deficit, Supranational Public- Sphere, European Welfare-State Model}, abstract={This paper focuses on the reasons of the legitimacy deficit of the
European Union’s (EU) political institutions and explains why the EU is not
considered as legitimate as the nation-states by the European citizens today.
One key claim is that although the democratic participation in the decision
making mechanisms and the welfare state policies have played a crucial in
the nation-states’ legitimisation processes; these have been greatly lacking
at the EU level. Instead of portraying the EU and the nation-state as two
continuously conflicting sovereignty areas, this paper tries to formulate a
theoretical political model for the EU which is inspired from the
experiences of the nation-states. This proposed model (for solving the
legitimacy deficit of the EU institutions) is based on communication, hybrid
supranational identity and public sphere, which are backed by social
policies at the supranational level.}, number={1}, publisher={Marmara University}