Democratic Governance in the European Union

Democratic legitimacy in any polity can be analysed in terms of the ‘output’ effectiveness and performance of its policies, the ‘input’ participation and representation of citizens along with governing elites' responsiveness, and the ‘throughput’ procedural quality of governance in terms of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and openness, as well as efficacy. In the European Union (EU), democratic legitimacy is split between the national level for political input, the EU level for policy output and procedural throughput. This has had a significant impact on national democracy, which has experienced increasing politicization as a result. The chapter illustrates this mainly with the emergency politics of the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 crisis.