OUTLINES OF GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS: POLITICS, ECONOMICS, LAW VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1, 2017 13 The Concept of New Democratic Legitimacy and the Future of the European Union Political Theory1 DOI: 10.23932/2542-0240 -2017-10-1-13-32 Adrian PABST School of Politics and International, University of Kent Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, CT2 7NX ORCID: 0000-0002-3153-1598 ABSTRACT. Both academic research and political debate have focused on the European Union’s much-mentioned but little-understood ‘democratic deicit’. By contrast, this article shits the emphasis to the issue of the EU’s crisis of legitimacy. It begins by suggesting that nei- ther the process nor the outcomes of EU-wide decision-making appears to command major- ity support. Is this lack of democratic legitimacy merely the result of institutional ‘design faults’ or does it relect a wider and deeper crisis un- derpinning the EU’s entire political project? My argument is that the dominant models of inte- gration – neo-functional supranationalism and liberal intergovernmentalism – rest on three errors: (1) the primacy of economic integration over political union, which has led to a market- state that is disembedded from society and a citizenry that is subordinated to the joint rule of the economic and the political; (2) a premature process of constitutionalisation that culminated in the rejection of the 2005 Constitutional Trea- ty and the lawed Lisbon Treaty; (3) the current institutional arrangements that concentrate power in the hands of supranational institu- tions and national governments at the expense of the Union’s citizenry. he irst section puts the question of democratic legitimacy in the context of the EU’s current slide towards disintegration. Section two pro- vides an account of the EU’s crisis of legitimacy and explores the main causes that have led to this predicament. Section three suggests that some of the origins can be traced to the incep- tion of the European project in the post-1945 era. Section four argues that the prospect for a core EU (around the Eurozone countries) is rapidly receding. Section ive outlines a new settlement that focuses on the idea of a Europe of nations, while the inal section develops this thinking in the direction of a civic common- wealth that is grounded in the shared culture of European countries. KEYWORDS: crisis, legitimacy, civic consent, popular participation, subsidiarity, neo-func- tionalism, inter-governmentalism, common- wealth FOR CITATION: Pabst A (2017) he Con- cept of New Democratic Legitimacy and the Future of the European Union Outlines of global transformations: politics, econom- ics, law, 10 (1) 13–32 DOI: 1023932/2542- 0240-2017-10-1-13-32