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by Ben Crum (Editor), John Erik Fossum (Editor)
Parliaments risk becoming the main losers of internationalisation; a process that privileges executives and experts. Still, parliamentarians have developed a range of responses to catch up with international decision-making: they coordinate their actions with other parliamentarians; engage in international parliamentary forums; and some even opt to pursue political careers at the supranational level, such as in the European Parliament. This volume provides a thorough empirical examination of how an internationalising context drives parliamentarians to engage in inter-parliamentary coordination; how it affects their power positions vis-à-vis executive actors; among themselves; and in society in general. Furthermore, building upon these empirical insights, the book assesses whether parliamentary democracy can remain sustainable under these changing conditions. Indeed, if parliaments are, and remain, central to our understanding of modern democracy, it is of crucial importance to track their responses to internationalisation, the fragmentation of political sovereignty, and the proliferation of multilevel politics.
Author Biography
Ben Crum is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He works on the political theory of European integration. He is the author of Learning from the EU Constitutional Treaty (Routledge 2012) and of academic articles in, among others, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Public Policy, European Union Politics, the European Political Science Review, and the European Law Journal. He studied in Amsterdam, London and Berlin, and holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence. Before joining the Vrije Universiteit he worked at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy in The Hague, and policy consultancy firm Research voor Beleid in Leiden. John Erik Fossum is Professor in Political Science at ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. He works on questions of democracy and constitutionalism in Europe and Canada. He is co-director of the research project NORCONE (The Norwegian Constitution in a Changing European Context) and former substitute coordinator for RECON (6th FP) and CIDEL (5th FP). He is president of ECSA Norway and vice-president of NACS. He has authored and edited eleven books and has published articles in such journals as Comparative European Politics, Constellations, Ethnicities, European Journal of Political Theory, European Journal of Social Theory, European Law Journal, European Political Science Review, European Review, International Political Science Review, International Journal, Journal of Civil Society, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, Regulation and Governance, and the Supreme Court Law Review.
