Project Summary

RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe) is a five-year research project with 19 partner institutions and around 70 participating researchers across Europe. RECON covers a wide range of academic fields, from political science, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology, to information science, law and legal theory, and economics. The coordinating institution is ARENA – Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo (Norway).

RECON seeks to clarify whether democracy is possible under conditions of pluralism, diversity and complex multilevel governance. This includes taking proper heed of the challenges to democracy at EU and national levels.

RECON spells out three different models for democratic reconstitution:

• Democracy can be reconstituted at the national level with a concomitant reframing of the EU as a functional regulatory regime
• Democracy can be reconstituted through establishing the EU as a federal state based on a collective identity
• Democracy can be reconstituted through developing a post-national Union with an explicit cosmopolitan imprint

RECON assesses which approach to democratic reconstitution is most viable – in empirical and normative terms – through analyzing the EU’s constitutionalisation process; the institutional complex at the EU and member state levels; the role and status of gender within the enlarged Europe; the democratic quality and governing capacity of the Union within tax/fiscal and foreign/security policy; and the multilevel configuration of civil society/public sphere. It examines the effects of external transnationalisation on the EU and discerns democratic lessons from comparison with non-European complex multilevel entities.

RECON enhances knowledge within a series of areas, such as the enlargement process, democracy in the new member states, challenges posed by globalization to established democracies, etc. It enhances the state of the art by developing and testing a theory of deliberative democratic supranationalism.

RECON is an Integrated Project financed by the European Commission. Read more at www.reconproject.eu.