Det bättre argumentets auktoritet - om förutsättningarna för deliberativ demokrati i Europaparlamentet
Representative democracyDeliberative democracyThe European ParliamentJürgen HabermasDemocratic legitimacyPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other. The conclusion thus is that the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament are fairly good. The thesis is concluded with some suggestions on how to evolve the results of the study in future research.