European Union Integration And Deliberative Democracy

2.0 European Union integration and deliberative democracy The European Union (EU) was established back in (REFERENCE) with the aim of (REFERENCE peace and economic prosperity). Since then, much has happened, and the EU is now considered more than just an economic collaboration. This brings along both new challenges and new opportunities when considering the future EU. Recent developments has shown an increasingly worry about the economic situation in the EU (REFERENCE GREECE AND SPAIN), which challenges the legitimacy of the EU as solely an economic union – if the internal economy is falling apart, how can we then justify the upholding of the union? This has become a major concern to several EU countries. One example is the United Kingdom,†¦show more content†¦The political relationship between nation-states is built upon negotiations between national governments. In this sense, the theory draws upon an ‘ration actor model’, where the nation-state is the primary analytical unit of interest, and intergovernmental negotiations are the context (Cini, 2007, p. 97). More precisely, Moravcsik writes that â€Å"Actors calculate the alternative courses of action and choose the one that maximizes (or satisfies) their utility under the circumstances.† (Moravcik and Schimmelfennig, 2009, p. 68). He argues that nation-states in the EU seek to maximise economic profit based on existing preferences. This form of rationality indirectly implies that a collaboration between EU countries is undesirable when there is no economic profit to be made by the nation-state. This also means that the theory is unable to accommodate alternative forms of political integration. If one believes in the idea that EU integration is (or should be) built upon economic profitable results alone, then it should be no surprise that the EU is currently witnessing the appearance of an increasing number of euroscepticist parties within several EU countries. The other main theory about EU integration, namely the neofunctionalist (NF) tradition, opposes the idea of LI in several ways. One of the main differences is the NF notion of positive spillover effects, e.g. that integration within the economic sector provides strong incentives for integration within other sectors.