Richard Bellamy

European University Institute | EUI

It is sometimes suggested that even democratic politicians need to dirty their hands in ways that render hypocrisy, lying and deception unavoidable and even justified. By contrast, we draw on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism to argue that the ‘reasonable disagreements’ occasioned by the ‘fact of pluralism’ that make democratic politics necessary ca...

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Republicanism rests on the insight that justice entails the fair distribution of political and social power. As a result, it emphasizes the importance of civic virtue and political participation and favors a political system involving a mixed constitution and the rule of law. However, whereas a neo-Aristotelian tradition of republicanism, going bac...

On pourrait estimer que l’intégration différenciée, conformément à laquelle des États membres se retirent ou sont exclus de certaines politiques européennes pour des motifs de souveraineté ou de capacité, sape le fonctionnement de l’Union européenne en tant qu’elle serait ce que John Rawls a appelé un système équitable de coopération, fondé sur des...

This chapter is the Introduction to R Bellamy and J King (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Section 1 explores three varieties of constitutional theory: normative, conceptual and positive. Section 2 then offers an account of the basic concept of a constitution, noting how it differs from its v...

Featuring contributions from leading scholars of history, law and politics, this path-breaking two-volume work traces the development of the United Kingdom's constitution from Anglo-Saxon times and explores its role in the creation, exercise and control of public power. Chapters in Volume One, entitled 'Exploring the Constitution', approach the con...

The UK's political constitution rests on the checking and balancing operations of a representative system in which parliament is sovereign. By contrast, referendums are often considered instances of popular sovereignty. Critics condemn them as populist appeals to a singular will of the people that risk majority tyranny, supporters believe they allo...

Modern republican theory as presented by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner rests upon a particular set of interpretations of the history of political thought. In particular, it is claimed, Hobbes’s redefinition of liberty as the absence of interference, subsequently taken up by Bentham and other utilitarian and liberal theorists, eclipsed the older...

Criticisms of political constitutionalism's relationship to populism point in two opposed directions. Legal constitutionalists consider it too open to, and even as legitimating, populist politics. Radical democrats consider it too closed to popular participation, prompting an anti-system politics of a populist character. I dispute both these views....

This chapter argues that differentiated integration (DI) provides a mechanism for combining the demands for European integration with the recognition of national diversity. It contends that differentiated integration must be understood not simply as strategically beneficial or expedient but also as ethically desirable and constrained. Differentiate...

This chapter moves from justice to democratic legitimacy, noting that some critics fear differentiated integration (DI) will give rise to domination. Democracy reduces the risk of domination by curbing the possibility of arbitrary rule and increasing the likelihood that rulers will address the common interests of the ruled and treat them with equal...

This chapter highlights the acceptance of pluralism and a commitment to the core components of any constitutional democracy. It covers free and fair elections, equal civil and political rights, and judicial independence and the rule of law. It also analyses demoicratic arguments for differentiated integration (DI), which cannot be legitimately recr...

This chapter confirms what political party actors think about their conception of the substantive fairness of differentiated integration (DI) and its democratic credentials. It provides a general overview of the political parties' views on DI, citing recent research that has emerged on how governments and citizens approach DI and political parties'...

This chapter addresses the substantive fairness of differentiated integration (DI), that is, its ability to ensure a just distribution of social and economic goods. The substantive fairness of DI has been subject to some disagreement as some scholars have noted that DI could have unfair redistributive effects by diminishing solidarity and creating...

This chapter looks at both the procedural fairness of the processes by which particular forms of differentiated integration (DI) are agreed upon and subsequently governed. It examines the substantive fairness of the distributions of burdens and benefits associated with participating in a given policy. It also argues that DI can be so designed as to...

This chapter talks about the concern that differentiated integration (DI) might undermine political equality among member states, thereby creating the possibility for some member states to dominate others. It relates this concern to a gap in the literature on DI, namely the degree to which it has remained remarkably silent with respect to questions...

This chapter focuses on how political party actors conceive of the EU and differentiated integration's (DI) role in matters of democratic backsliding, and what factors motivate their views. It complements interview materials with a survey of 42 party actors to analyse whether they perceive democratic backsliding to be a problematic issue. It confir...

The European Union (EU) is often portrayed as sacrificing national diversity for European unity. This book explores the alternative of a flexible EU based on differentiated rather than uniform integration. The authors combine normative theory with empirical research on political party actors to assess the desirability and political acceptability of...

Clear, balanced and accessible, this book explores the alternative of a flexible European Union (EU) based on differentiated rather than uniform integration. They examine the circumstances and institutional design needed for flexibility to promote rather than undermine fairness and democracy within and between member states.

1. Advisor, National Liberal Party (PNL), Romania, June 2020 2. Co-chair, Politics Can Be Different (LMP), Hungary, March 2020 3. Elected official, Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), Hungary, March 2020 4. International Secretary, Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), Hungary, March 2020 5. Elected official, Democratic Coalition (DK), Hungary, Mar...

Political parties have played an ambivalent role in regard to democratic backsliding. On the one hand, the literature has noted how in the EP, the European People's Party (EPP) and (to a lesser extent) the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), backed by some of their constituent domestic parties, have undermined EU efforts by other parties i...

We have argued that differentiated integration provides a mechanism for combining the demands for European integration with the recognition of national diversity. However, to do so we contend that DI must be understood not simply as strategically beneficial or expedient but also as ethically desirable and constrained. DI would prove objectionable a...

This chapter addresses the substantive fairness of DI, that is, its ability to ensure a just distribution of social and economic goods. The substantive fairness of DI has been subject to some disagreement. While some scholars have noted that DI could have unfair redistributive effects by diminishing solidarity (Michailidou and Trenz, 2018) and crea...

Clear, balanced and accessible, this book explores the alternative of a flexible European Union (EU) based on differentiated rather than uniform integration. They examine the circumstances and institutional design needed for flexibility to promote rather than undermine fairness and democracy within and between member states.

The Introduction revealed how DI has pragmatic and normative virtues: it helps European integration to proceed through widening and deepening, and facilitates the accommodation of divergent national capacities and preferences. However, allowing such institutional diversity raises the question of whether DI will yield a form of EU cooperation all pa...

Recent developments in Hungary and Poland have pushed the issue of democratic backsliding to the centre of political and academic debates about the nature and future of the EU. Democratic backsliding consists of a retreat by an incumbent government from democratic values and practices with the intention of curtailing criticism and inhibiting democr...

What do political party actors think about the questions we have tackled so far? How do they conceive of the substantive fairness of DI, its democratic credentials, and do they link DI to democratic backsliding? Before we delve into these issues, this chapter provides a general overview of political parties’ views on DI. Whereas recent research has...

This chapter addresses the concern that DI might undermine political equality among member states, thereby creating the possibility for some member states to dominate others. We relate this concern to what Max Heermann and Dirk Leuffen identify as a gap in the literature on DI – namely, the degree to which it has ‘remained remarkably silent with re...

Chapter 1 looked at how DI can either promote or weaken substantive fairness among both member states and citizens, and might be legitimized and constrained by certain democratic arrangements designed to ensure procedural fairness. Here we explore further how democracy may itself justify and require certain forms of DI. As we noted in the Introduct...

Interview Questions 1. There is currently a debate on the future institutional shape of the European Union. In your view, what institutional reforms, if any, are required? 2. In recent years, EU integration has become more and more flexible. Some countries have negotiated permanent optouts (for example Denmark). Others have been temporarily exclude...

Survey Questions 1. In your view, are some EU governments failing to uphold fully the Rule of Law and democratic principles such as free and fair elections, basic civic and political rights and judicial independence? Yes/No 2. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union states that ‘the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, fre...

Both political parties and differentiated integration (DI) play an ambivalent role in regard to democratic backsliding. Parties’ positioning towards democratic backsliding has not always been straightforward, and DI has been seen as facilitating it. We analyse whether party actors view democratic backsliding as a problematic issue for the EU, if th...

My five critics all raise important points, giving reasons for viewing my account as either insufficiently or overly realist or utopian. By and large, I stick to my guns in regarding my version of a realistic Utopia of a republican association of states as the most plausible way of achieving a non-dominating global order capable of meeting the mora...

This introduction offers a synopsis of the book, A Republican Europe of States, outlining its main arguments, followed by an overview of the symposium.

The European Union (EU) is often portrayed as sacrificing national diversity for European unity. This book explores the alternative of a flexible EU based on differentiated rather than uniform integration. The authors combine normative theory with empirical research on political party actors to assess the desirability and political acceptability o...

This chapter focuses not on the possible content of a Bill of Rights, such as whether it should contain social and economic rights or only civil and political rights, but on the form any such Bill needs to take to be legitimate in a manner congruent with the moral norms of equal concern and respect underlying both rights and democracy. It explores...

Research on differentiated integration (DI) has by and large ignored the views of political party actors on DI. Drawing on 35 semi-structured interviews with party actors from seven member states and situated across the political spectrum, we show them to regard DI as divisive and deeply political. We also identify two little explored dimensions af...

Differentiated integration (DI), whereby some MS opt out or are excluded from certain common EU policies for sovereignty or capacity reasons, may be thought to undermine the EU’s functioning as what John Rawls called a fair scheme of cooperation, grounded in norms of impartiality and reciprocity. However, we argue that different forms of DI can be...

Constitutional pluralism (CP) and differentiated integration (DI) have been criticised as potentially legitimising democratic backsliding within the EU. Critics contend that effective measures require strengthening the legal authority of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the political authority of the European Commission. We dispute th...

Differentiated integration (DI) appeals as a pragmatic way of accommodating political and economic differences among member states (MS). However, it potentially challenges their equal standing in EU decision‐making, creating the possibility for some MS to dominate others. As such, it risks undermining the democratic legitimacy of the EU. Drawing on...

This essay offers a genealogy of the UK’s political constitution from the seventeenth century to the present, noting how it has drawn on different ideas and taken different forms over time, and highlighting the contingent nature of its current representative and parliamentary character. It identifies three forms of political constitutionalism over...

How can democracies effectively represent citizens? The goal of this Handbook is to evaluate comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by institutions in liberal democracies. It first explores how the idea and institutions of liberal democracies were formed over centuries and became enshrined in Weste...

Globalization has typically been regarded as challenging representative democracy at the state level. This chapter outlines four of these challenges—that of democratic externalities, of transnational global processes and supranational organizations, of cosmopolitan norms, and of effective and justified representation at the global level. It then ex...

Globalization has typically been regarded as challenging representative democracy at the state level. This chapter outlines four of these challenges-that of democratic externalities, of transnational global processes and supranational organizations, of cosmopolitan norms, and of effective and justified representation at the global level. It then ex...

This essay explores how far democracy is compatible with lies and deception, and whether it encourages or discourages their use by politicians. Neo-Kantian arguments, such as Glen Newey’s, that lies and deception undermine individual autonomy and the possibility for consent go too far, given that no democratic process can be regarded as a plausible...

Taking debates about democracy in the EU as an example, Fabio Wolkenstein proposes that normative theorists should adopt a ‘partisan’ approach that engages with ‘formative agents’ to advocate for transformative political and societal change, such as the creation of a transnational democracy at the EU level. He criticises those he calls ‘democratic...

Political Constitutionalism (hereinafter PC)1 deployed the version of republican theory developed by Philip Pettit to argue against not only the liberal democratic case for legal constitutionalism and judicial review put forward by John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin but also Pettit’s own purportedly neo-republican version of a similar argument,2 along w...

Cambridge Core - Political Philosophy - Republicanism and the Future of Democracy - edited by Yiftah Elazar

Republicanism and the Future of Democracy - edited by Yiftah Elazar April 2019

This is a pre-print of a CUP book - the revised and published text is available from Cambridge Core - European Studies - A Republican Europe of States - by Richard Bellamy

I share Floris de Witte’s concern about the attacks on the EU currently coming from the populist right, a challenge epitomized by, but unfortunately not restricted to, the Brexit campaign in the UK. However, I doubt that the best way to answer such misleading rhetoric is to make rhetorical counter-claims. Rather, it is to show that their views are...

Ferrera offers his proposal as a way of reconciling national citizens to the trans- and supra-national citizenship regime promoted by the EU. This chapter argues that his proposal is better seen as part of the EU’s inter-national regime, in which the national citizenship regimes of each of the member states are balanced against each other in order...

A key feature of the very idea of Union citizenship which, as a political scientist, I find can be lost in the predominantly legal analysis of this topic, is the reliance of citizenship rights, including those associated with Union citizenship, on politics in general and the state – in this case the member states – in particular. It is this politic...

This essay explores how far democracy is compatible with lies and deception, and whether it encourages or discourages their use by politicians. Neo-Kantian arguments, such as Newey’s, that lies and deception undermine individual autonomy and the possibility for consent go too far, given that no democratic process can be regarded as a plausible mech...

This chapter highlights the three main positions that have come to dominate the normative debate on the European Union: cosmopolitanism (premised on a social contract between individuals globally), statism (premised on a social contract between states), and, more recently, demoicracy (premised on a social contract between states and all their indiv...