IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/mpifgw/p0079.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reflections on multilevel legitimacy

Author

Listed:
  • Scharpf, Fritz W.

Abstract

The function of legitimacy is to ensure voluntary compliance with unwelcome exercises of governing authority. Since practically all European law needs to be implemented and enforced by the governments and courts of the member states, the EU does not have to face its citizens directly. It follows that the legitimacy of European governance ought to be conceptualized at two levels. At one level, the legitimacy of member states is decisive for the compliance of individuals and fi rms, regardless of the ultimate origin - international, European or national - of the rules that demand this compliance. At the other level, the legitimacy of the European 'government of governments' is decisive for the voluntary compliance of member states with the obligations imposed on them by the EU. What should be worrying however is the impact which EU governance - especially the rules of negative integration defi ned by politically non-accountable actors - may have on the legitimacy of member states, and ultimately on their capacity to comply.

Suggested Citation

  • Scharpf, Fritz W., 2007. "Reflections on multilevel legitimacy," MPIfG Working Paper 07/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:mpifgw:p0079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/41671/1/550338845.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreas Follesdal & Simon Hix, 2006. "Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44, pages 533-562, September.
    2. Ferrera, Maurizio, 2005. "The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199284672.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2002. "Why Social Preferences Matter -- The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 1-33, March.
    4. Garrett, Geoffrey, 1992. "International cooperation and institutional choice: the European Community's internal market," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 533-560, April.
    5. Ziltener, Patrick, 2002. "Wirtschaftliche Effekte des EU-Binnenmarktprogramms," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 15, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    6. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Why Social Preferences Matter - The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition," IEW - Working Papers 084, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    7. Andreas Follesdal & Simon Hix, 2006. "Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 533-562, September.
    8. Stone Sweet, Alec, 2004. "The Judicial Construction of Europe," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199275533.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Glencross, 2009. "Altiero Spinelli and the Idea of the US Constitution as a Model for Europe: The Promises and Pitfalls of an Analogy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47, pages 287-307, March.
    2. Vivien A. Schmidt, 2010. "The European Union in search of political identity and legitimacy: Is more Politics the Answer?," Working Papers of the Vienna Institute for European integration research (EIF) 5, Institute for European integration research (EIF).
    3. Andrew Glencross, 2009. "Altiero Spinelli and the Idea of the US Constitution as a Model for Europe: The Promises and Pitfalls of an Analogy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 287-307, March.
    4. Vivien Schmidt, 2010. "Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited - Input, Output and Throughput," KFG Working Papers p0021, Free University Berlin.
    5. Hannes Hansen‐Magnusson & Antje Wiener, 2010. "Studying Contemporary Constitutionalism: Memory, Myth and Horizon," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 21-44, January.
    6. Hannes Hansen-Magnusson & Antje Wiener, 2010. "Studying Contemporary Constitutionalism: Memory, Myth and Horizon," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48, pages 21-44, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2012. "Legitimacy intermediation in the multilevel European polity and its collapse in the euro crisis," MPIfG Discussion Paper 12/6, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Fritz W. Scharpf, 2009. "The Asymmetry of European Integration - or why the EU cannot be a Social Market Economy," KFG Working Papers p0006, Free University Berlin.
    3. Scharpf, Fritz Wilhelm, 2009. "Legitimacy in the multilevel European polity," MPIfG Working Paper 09/1, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    4. Höpner, Martin & Schäfer, Armin, 2012. "Integration among unequals: How the heterogeneity of European varieties of capitalism shapes the social and democratic potential of the EU," MPIfG Discussion Paper 12/5, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    5. Scharpf, Fritz W., 2016. "De-constitutionalization and majority rule: A democratic vision for Europe," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/14, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Johan Willner, 2003. "Privatisation and Public Ownership in Finland," CESifo Working Paper Series 1012, CESifo.
    7. Carlo Borzaga & Ermanno Tortia, 2004. "Worker involvement in entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations. Toward a new assessment of workers' perceived satisfaction and fairness," Department of Economics Working Papers 0409, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    8. Richard Hyman & Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, 2020. "(How) can international trade union organisations be democratic?," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 253-272, August.
    9. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    10. Kimmich, Christian & Fischbacher, Urs, 2016. "Behavioral determinants of supply chain integration and coexistence," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 55-77.
    11. Alpizar, Francisco & Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2005. "How much do we care about absolute versus relative income and consumption?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 405-421, March.
    12. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2009. "Post-Keynesian economics How to move forward," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 227-246.
    13. Frank Cowell & Marc Fleurbaey & Bertil Tungodden, 2015. "The tyranny puzzle in social preferences: an empirical investigation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(4), pages 765-792, December.
    14. Thieme, Lutz & Winkelhake, Olaf & Hartmann, Ulrich, 2014. "Fairness als universelle Norm? Empirische Evidenz ohne Manna [Fairness as a universal norm? Empiric evidence without manna]," Working Papers of the European Institute for Socioeconomics 12, European Institute for Socioeconomics (EIS), Saarbrücken.
    15. Fredrik Carlsson & Olof Johansson‐Stenman & Peter Martinsson, 2007. "Do You Enjoy Having More than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 586-598, November.
    16. Johnsen, Åshild A & Kvaløy, Ola, 2014. "You always meet twice: An experiment on intrinsic versus instrumental reciprocity," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2014/2, University of Stavanger.
    17. Carsten Hefeker & Michael Neugart, 2016. "Policy deviations, uncertainty, and the European Court of Justice," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 547-567, December.
    18. Katjana Gattermann & Claes H De Vreese, 2017. "The role of candidate evaluations in the 2014 European Parliament elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour?," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 447-468, September.
    19. Christopher J Williams, 2016. "Issuing reasoned opinions: The effect of public attitudes towards the European Union on the usage of the 'Early Warning System'," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(3), pages 504-521, September.
    20. Ortiz-Riomalo, Juan Felipe & Koessler, Ann-Kathrin & Engel, Stefanie, 2021. "Inducing perspective-taking for prosocial behaviour in natural resource management," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(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:zbw:mpifgw:p0079. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mpigfde.html .

    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.