IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v41y2003i2p203-225.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Creation and Empowerment of the European Parliament

Author

Listed:
  • Berthold Rittberger

Abstract

Up until now we have lacked a systematic, theoretically guided explanation of why the European Union, as the only system of international governance, contains a powerful representative institution, the European Parliament, and why it has been successively empowered by national governments over the past half century. It is argued that national governments' decisions to transfer sovereignty to a new supranational level of governance triggers an imbalance between procedural and consequentialist legitimacy which political elites are fully aware of. To repair this imbalance, proposals to empower the European Parliament play a prominent though not exclusive role. Three landmark events are analysed to assess the plausibility of the advanced theory: the creation of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, the acquisition of budgetary powers (Treaty of Luxembourg, 1970) and of legislative powers through the Single European Act (1986).

Suggested Citation

  • Berthold Rittberger, 2003. "The Creation and Empowerment of the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 203-225, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:41:y:2003:i:2:p:203-225
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-5965.00419
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5965.00419
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-5965.00419?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Berthold Rittberger, 2014. "Integration without Representation? The European Parliament and the Reform of Economic Governance in the EU," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(6), pages 1174-1183, November.
    2. Jürgen Neyer, 2010. "Justice, Not Democracy: Legitimacy in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 903-921, September.
    3. Buket Oztas & Amie Kreppel, 2022. "Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission's Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 408-426, March.
    4. Harmen Van der Veer & Simon Otjes, 2021. "A House Divided against Itself. The Intra‐institutional Conflict about the Powers of the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 822-838, July.
    5. Edoardo Bressanelli & Nicola Chelotti & Matteo Nebbiai, 2023. "The Recovery and Resilience Dialogues: Cheap Talk or Effective Oversight?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(4), pages 297-310.
    6. Berthold Rittberger, 2003. "Removing conceptual blinders: Under what conditions does the ‘democratic deficit’ affect institutional design decisions?," The Constitutionalism Web-Papers p0023, University of Hamburg, Faculty for Economics and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science.
    7. Deters, Henning, 2010. "Legislating on car emissions: What drives standards in EU environmental policy?," TranState Working Papers 142, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    8. Thomas Winzen, 2021. "The European Semester and Parliamentary Oversight Institutions Inside and Outside of the Euro Area," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(3), pages 100-111.
    9. Christophe Crombez & Johan F.M. Swinnen, 2011. "Political Institutions and Public Policy: The Co-Decision Procedure in the European Union and the Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy," LICOS Discussion Papers 28611, LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven.
    10. Jürgen Neyer, 2010. "Justice, Not Democracy: Legitimacy in the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48, pages 903-921, September.
    11. Sivek, Martin & Jirásek, Jakub & Kavina, Pavel & Vojnarová, Markéta & Kurková, Tereza & Bašová, Andrea, 2020. "Divorce after hundreds of years of marriage: Prospects for coal mining in the Czech Republic with regard to the European Union," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:41:y:2003:i:2:p:203-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.