The Sinews of European Peace Reconstituting the Democratic Legitimacy of the Socio-Economic Constitution of the European Union Raúl Letelier and Agustín José Menéndez (eds) ARENA Report No 7/09 RECON Report No 10 The Sinews of European Peace Reconstituting the Democratic Legitimacy of the Socio-Economic Constitution of the European Union Raúl Letelier and Agustín José Menéndez (eds) Copyright ARENA and authors ARENA Report Series (print) | ISSN 0807-3139 ARENA Report Series (online) | ISSN 1504-8152 RECON Report Series (print) | ISSN 1504-7253 RECON Report Series (online) | ISSN 1504-7261 Printed at ARENA Centre for European Studies University of Oslo P.O. Box 1143, Blindern N-0318 Oslo, Norway Tel: + 47 22 85 87 00 Fax: + 47 22 85 87 10 E-mail:
[email protected] http://www.arena.uio.no http://www.reconproject.eu Oslo, December 2009 Cover picture: ‘The Nightmare of the Bourgoise’ (1932) by Nicanor Piñole, Museo Nicanor Piñole. Preface Reconstituting Democracy in Europe (RECON) is an Integrated Project supported by the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme for Research, Priority 7 ‘Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based Society’. The five-year project has 21 partners in 13 European countries and New Zealand, and is coordinated by ARENA – Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. RECON takes heed of the challenges to democracy in Europe. It seeks to clarify whether democracy is possible under conditions of pluralism, diversity and complex multilevel governance. See more on the project at www.reconproject.eu. The present report is on ‘The Political Economy of the European Union’ – work package 7 of the RECON project.