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When is differentiated integration (DI) of the European Union a source of autonomy and when is it a source of domination? Much depends on what collective goods member state democracies seek through integration. Club goods often require member state democracies to form DIs of their choice. Public goods and common resource goods may, in contrast, require limits on DI if member state democracies are to meet their own obligations to their own publics to secure rights, justice, non-domination and democracy itself. Those differences are important to understanding how European democracies should be 'internationally ordered' if they are to sustain internal forms of political autonomy. They also demonstrate the importance of DI to the autonomy of member state democracies in associating together beyond the state; in defining obligations within the state; and in securing the greatest autonomy of each European democracy compatible with the greatest possible autonomy of all European democracies.

This Living Review uses concepts of aggregation to analyse what we do and do not know about the contribution of political parties to the politics and democratic performance of the European Union. It suggests that present representative structures are better at aggregating 'choices of policies' than 'choices of leaders'. Much more, however, needs to be done to analyse the causal contribution of party actors to those patterns of aggregation, and to understand why European Union parties do not develop further where aggregation seems to be deficient in the EU arena. Adapted from the source document.

Behind the façade of democracy are a number of unanswered questions, foremost among them how to relate democracy beyond the state especially at the EU level to democracy within the state. This important new text provides a wide-ranging assessment of the theory and practice of democracy at all levels in Europe today

Most of the contemporary debates about the European Union - about its role, its institutional arrangements, its development dynamic, its expansion and possible futures - revolve around the issue of political legitimacy. Legitimacy and the European Union addresses the fundamental issues at the heart of the debates on Europe and examines such key questions as:- -What is the scope of the EU's authority -Is there a legitimacy deficit? If so, how much does it matter -Does political legitimacy only reside in the nation state? Using a multi-dimensional conception of political legitimacy, the text a