Bulletin n. 3/2006
December 2006
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Thomas Daniel C.
    Constitutionalization through enlargement: the contested origins of the EU's democratic identity
    in Journal of European Public Policy , Volume 13, Number 8 / December 2006 ,  2006 ,  1190 - 1210
    This article demonstrates that the constitutionalization of the EU began with a political struggle to set the rules by which the community would respond to applications for membership. By mobilizing to block Spain's association with the EEC in 1962, European parliamentarians, trade unionists, and others who believed that democratic and human rights principles should be institutionalized within the community established an informal rule governing the community's policy practice that laid the groundwork for the subsequent constitutionalization of democratic and human rights principles within the community's treaties and jurisprudence. It demonstrates the critical contribution to the political construction of Europe made by non-state actors willing to challenge the preferences of member state governments and shows that otherwise weak actors are significantly empowered when they are able to identify their preferences with pre-existing domestic and international norms.
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