Transnational Communication and the European Demos

Peter A. Kraus

In Digital Formations : IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm, eds. Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Digitization is triggering a global communication revolution that has the potential to constitute new social domains. Emerging at the intersection of technological and societal processes, digital formations are creating new political topologies and reconfiguring existing networks and organizations. The European Union (EU)is often thought of as such a border‐transcending communicative space. Since the heady pioneering days of Jean Monnet, technological advances have inspired the architects of the European integration project. Today, information technology plays a prominent role in the debate about how to promote a closer union of Europe’s peoples. In this chapter, we focus on the question whether digitization could constitute a new political realm coinciding with the European Union. Can democracy take root at the European level without a “demos” encompassing the whole of the Union? How would such a popular unit have to be constituted in order to form a communicative space supporting democratic deliberations and decisions? More specifically, what are the prospects of a digital demos in Europe?

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s4z8

DOI:

Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Peter A. Kraus. 2005. “Transnational Communication and the European Demos.” In Digital Formations : IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm, eds. Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

@inbook{transnational-communication-and-the-european-demos,
   Title = {Transnational Communication and the European Demos},
   Author = {Cederman, Lars-Erik and Kraus, Peter A.},
   Booktitle = {Digital Formations : IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm},
   Editor = {Latham, Robert and Sassen, Saskia},
   Publisher = {Princeton University Press},
   Year = {2005},
   Address = {Princeton, NJ},
   abstract = {Digitization is triggering a global communication revolution that has the potential to constitute new social domains. Emerging at the intersection of technological and societal processes, digital formations are creating new political topologies and reconfiguring existing networks and organizations. The European Union (EU)is often thought of as such a border-transcending communicative space. Since the heady pioneering days of Jean Monnet, technological advances have inspired the architects of the European integration project. Today, information technology plays a prominent role in the debate about how to promote a closer union of Europe's peoples. In this chapter, we focus on the question whether digitization could constitute a new political realm coinciding with the European Union. Can democracy take root at the European level without a ``demos'' encompassing the whole of the Union? How would such a popular unit have to be constituted in order to form a communicative space supporting democratic deliberations and decisions? More specifically, what are the prospects of a digital demos in Europe?},
   doi = {},
   url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s4z8}
}