European Union and Global Democracy

In order to deepen our understanding of the subject matter of the EU and global democracy in a more analytic way, the book is structured in two parts, which deal respectively with the two main dimensions of the unique EU experiment of democracy beyond state borders. In the first part, the internal aspect of EU regional democracy approach is examined in the papers by Lukšič and Bahor, Vercauteren, Arató and Balazs. The papers in this part deal with several important issues. One of them is the question of participatory democracy as it enters the European institutional and constitutional debate, as well as how it can or cannot contribute to bridge the democratic gap between rulers and ruled. A very interesting debate was raised around the issue of governance versus government as it appears in the context of crisis and transformation of nation state. This part of the book includes the analysis of the role of civil society in scope of the process of strengthening the democracy in the EU, but also incentive understanding of the EU as a practical and political project of the Kantian philosophical concept of perpetual peace. In the second part of the volume, the external aspect of EU global democracy approach is examined in the papers by Lane, Marchetti, Milardović, and Vujić. Primarily, analysis raised the question of global governance and discussed the importance of ongoing regionalization and development of new patterns of coordination between states. This part also brings the debate about ways in which EU may appear as a model for global democracy, particularly by analysing European foreign policy. Review of understandings of cosmopolitan model of Europeanization and its future scenarios is complemented with critical analysis of global democracies.