To be at the same time effective and liberal, governments must normally be able to count on voluntary compliance – which, in turn, depends on the support of socially shared legitimacy beliefs. In Western constitutional democracies, such beliefs are derived from the distinct, but coexistent traditions of ‘republican’ and ‘liberal’ political philosophy. Judged by these criteria, the European Union – when considered by itself – appears as a thoroughly liberal polity which, however, lacks all republican credentials. But this view (which seems to structure the debates about the ‘European democratic deficit’) ignores the multilevel nature of the European polity, where the compliance of citizens is requested, and needs to be legitimated, by member states, whereas the Union appears as a ‘government of governments’, which is entirely dependent on the voluntary compliance of its member states. What matters primarily, therefore, is the compliance–legitimacy relationship between the Union and its member states – which, however, is normatively constrained by the basic compliance–legitimacy relationship between member governments and their constituents. Given the high consensus requirements of European legislation, member governments could, and should, be able to assume political responsibility for European policies in which they had a voice, and to justify them in ‘communicative discourses’ in the national public space. That is not necessarily so for ‘non-political’ policy choices imposed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). By enforcing its ‘liberal’ programme of liberalization and deregulation, the ECJ may presently be undermining the ‘republican’ bases of member-state legitimacy. Where that is the case, open non-compliance is a present danger, and political controls of judicial legislation may be called for.

Political science research on Europeanization has focused too little on the domestic legal-constitutional implications of European legal integration. We address this relative neglect, identifying two models of the impact of European law on domestic judicial discourses and testing them against evidence on the invocation of three EU law concepts within English courts. Contrary to a statist model, which expects judicial discourses to correspond closely with direct importations of European law through the preliminary reference procedure, we find stronger support for an indigenization model in which courts gradually domesticate previously alien concepts. These domesticating discourses offer new insights into domestic political and constitutional orders in the context of European and international legalization.

This article discusses what implications the European Union’s (EU’s) multilevel structure has for its democratic legitimacy. It identifies three channels of democratic input in the EU – the European Parliament, national democratic processes influencing the Council of Ministers, and civil society participation in consultation procedures of the European Commission – and assesses them on the basis of a comprehensive set of criteria. The evaluation shows that the democratization of the EU faces three interlinked dilemmas. Most fundamentally, there is an incongruence in territorial scope between the issues requiring democratic control (increasingly European if not global) and the imagined communities necessary for the functioning of democratic procedures (primarily national). This ‘congruence dilemma’ intensifies contradictions between participation and deliberation, as well as between effectiveness and accountability in EU decision-making. Grand reforms that would solve these dilemmas once and for all are unlikely to be successful, but changes in the interplay of the three democratic channels – such as the disentanglement of political competencies, the formalization of inter-channel conciliation procedures, and the introduction of directly democratic mechanisms – promise to mitigate their negative effects.

This article introduces the concept of the ‘Multilevel Parliamentary Field’ as a means for analysing the structure of democratic representation in the European Union (EU). This concept is warranted for several reasons. First, the multilevel configuration that makes up the EU contains two channels of democratic representation: one directly through the European Parliament, the other indirectly through the national parliaments and governments. These two channels are likely to persist side by side; hence, both the European and the national parliaments can claim to represent ‘the people’ in EU decision-making. Second, this structure of representation is in many respects without precedent; it does not fit established concepts of democratic representation derived from the nation-state or from international relations, such as a federal two-channel system or a parliamentary network. Third, the representative bodies in the EU are interlinked, also across levels. Up until now, no proper conceptual apparatus has been devised that can capture the distinctive traits of this EU multilevel representative system, and help to assess its democratic quality. The concept of the Multilevel Parliamentary Field fills both these tasks. It serves as a heuristic device to integrate the empirical analysis of the different forms of democratic representation in the EU’s multilevel system, and it provides new angles for analysing the democratic challenges that this system faces.

In recent years there has been growing interest and a related literature on hybrid regimes. Is there a good definition of such an institutional arrangement? Are there actually sets of stabilized, political institutions that can be labelled in this way? Is it possible that within the widespread process of democracy diffusion these are only ‘transitional’ regimes and the most suitable distinction is still the old one, suggested by Linz and traditionally accepted, between democracy and authoritarianism? This article addresses and responds to these questions by pinpointing the pertinent analytic dimensions, starting with definitions of ‘regime’, ‘authoritarianism’, and ‘democracy’; by defining what a ‘hybrid regime’ is; by trying to answer the key question posed in the title; by disentangling the cases of proper hybrid regimes from the cases of transitional phases; and by proposing a typology of hybrid regimes. Some of the main findings and conclusions refer to the lack of institutions capable of performing their functions as well as the key elements for achieving possible changes towards democracy.

Political science is the product of modernity and the nation-state. A dominant tradition within it has striven for a positivistic and universal form of understanding, based on the individual actor. Developments in recent years have questioned our understanding of modernity, universalism, science, and the nation-state. Political science has responded in two ways: by reinforcing the positivist approach, or by adopting various forms of intepretivism. This has created an artificial division within the discipline. Political scientists can overcome this artificial divide by looking outside the discipline. There are promising developments in this direction but these are inhibited by trying to confine them within the dominant positivist mode. They have also responded by borrowing from neighbouring disciplines, but in doing so, they have too often appropriated concepts in simplified form or coined empty concepts. They need to take neighbouring disciplines more seriously and work across disciplinary boundaries. A pluralistic approach is possible, which neither seeks a grand synthesis of all the social sciences, nor sees them as independent and self-standing, but which encourages cross-fertilization and combinations of approaches. The existence of distinct European national and disciplinary traditions, far from being an obstacle to the development of the discipline, gives European political scientists an advantage.