Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Legal Theory Blog

Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Curtin, Bowens, & Hart on the EU Accountability Deficit

By Lawrence Solum

Deirdre Curtin, Mark Bovens and Paul 't Hart (Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance , University of Utrecht - Utrecht School of Governance) have posted The EU?s Accountability Deficit: Reality or Myth? (WHAT DEFICIT? THE REAL WORLD OF EU ACCOUNTABILITY, Mark Bovens, Deirdre Curtin, & Paul 't Hart, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper is the introduction to a book that rests on a simple premise: since European governance matters a lot in a growing number of domains, questions about how European governance should, could and is being accounted for, are increasingly salient. The contribution this book seeks to make is to shed light on how such accountability for European governance is presently organized, how it occurs in practice, and how such practices can be evaluated. This book reports the findings of a major empirical study into patterns and practices of accountability in European governance. It is the product of a four-year project involving four senior and three junior scholars all affiliated with the Utrecht School of Governance of Utrecht University. It assesses to what extent and how the people that populate the key arenas where European public policy is made or implemented are held accountable. Using a systematic analytical framework, it examines not just the formal accountability arrangements but also describes and compares how these operate in practice. In doing so, it provides a unique, empirically grounded contribution to the pivotal but often remarkably fact-free debate about democracy and accountability in European governance.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 22, 2009 (boomark / email).