Political responsibility and the European Union

This book addresses the question of political legitimacy in the European Union from the much neglected angle of political responsibility. It develops an original communitarian approach to legitimacy based on Alasdair MacIntyre’s ethics of virtues and practices, that can be contrasted with prevalent liberal-egalitarian and neo-republican approaches.

Tsakatika argues that a ‘responsibility deficit’, quite distinct from the often discussed ‘democratic deficit’, can be diagnosed in the European...