The EU economic governance and the crises of representative democracies

The EU economic governance and the crises of representative democracies

The European integration has triggered transformations to the national political, legal and party systems of its Member States. It is also at the core of the transformative processes of the state’s regulations of their own macro-economic policies. What was once a political question, debated by the national political parties, followed by the enrollment of the other social actors, today is left to be decided by the technocratic executives, already embedded in the transformed relation between the state and the citizens, justified by the rules of emergency and the crisis management. These occurrences however continue to feed the growing disenchantment with democracy and to blur the responsibilities of the actors who decide on behalf of ‘the people’. This lecture will present the historical trajectory of these transformations and the conditions that have brought to these changes, including the decline of the parliamentarism since the 1970s, the decline of the state confidence in the macroeconomic management etc. Finally, this lecture will present why this historical context can explain many of the contemporary challenges in Europe, including the triggers for conflicts of sovereignty between executives, parliamentary and popular sovereignty, taking place at the nation-state level.

Emilija Tudzarovska is a Lecturer in Contemporary European Politics at Charles University in Prague and a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences. She completed her Marie Curie Sklodowska Doctoral Fellowship under the Innovative Horizon 2020 Project PLATO, which investigated the Post-Crisis Legitimacy of the European Union. Besides her academic background, she holds professional experiences in EU, UK, German and other foreign best practices by working at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), British Embassy and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Skopje. She holds Master’s Degrees in International Politics and MSc in Educational Management. Her work appears in the Routledge edition, Legitimacy Recovered? The Politics of Legitimation in the European Union (2021) edited by Lord, C. et all; The Central European Public Administration Review (2020) and elsewhere. She also writes op-eds for Social Europe, European Western Balkans and other media.

The seminar will take place in English in person in the meeting room, there is no need to register in advance.