LAW, LEGITIMACY, AND EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE. FUNCTIONAL PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL REGULATION
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00022.x |
| Author | Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
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© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (479–515)
LAW, LEGITIMACY, AND EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE.
FUNCTIONAL PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL REGULATION
Stijn Smismans
Oxford University Press, 2004, 519 pp., £60 (hb) ISBN: 0199270309
Stijn Smismans ’ book entitled Law, Legitimacy, and European Governance rep-
resents an impressive piece of work. It confronts the fundamental question
on legitimacy in the European Union, but does so from the rather neglected
perspective of functional participation, that is, the formal participation of
interest groups in European policy-making. This is done through the spe-
cifi c case of European occupational health and workplace safety. The case is
thoroughly analysed, both in terms of historical development and in terms
of the different means of integrating functional groups. Furthermore, the
book employs an interdisciplinary approach to analyse functional participa-
tion as an additional source of legitimacy. This approach combines political
science theory on interest group participation in policy-making with con-
crete proposals on how legal provisions and strengthened judicial review
can amend the procedures of functional participation and thus enhance the
legitimacy of the EU political system. To the political scientist and the
scholar of the EU political system, the book challenges predominant per-
spectives on legitimacy by arguing that the question must be addressed in
a way that goes beyond traditional parliamentarian solutions . It asks
whether institutionalized forms of interest group participation may offer an
additional source of EU legitimacy.
Smismans ’ initial and central argument is that the debate on democracy
and legitimacy in the EU has focused on territorial representation, that is,
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