Given that we have democracy of a kind in most of Europe, and that there seems a reasonable prospect of its survival in, and extension to the rest of, the sub-continent, this article asks whether and to what extent we also need European-level democratic politics and how we might hope to achieve this, against the background of the current crisis. This article examines the ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU and the tensions between its formal decision-making structures and the growth of (...) what has been called ‘executive federalism’, and also between collective planning and deregulation. (shrink)

Mass media have been accused of cultivating anti-immigrant sentiments in Western societies. Most studies on this topic, however, have not made a distinction between the types of television program (information vs. entertainment) or television station (public vs. commercial). Adopting a comparative approach, we use data from the six waves of the European Social Survey (ESS, 2002–2012, n = 162,987) to assess the relationship between individual and aggregate level patterns of television consumption and anti-immigrant sentiments in European societies. Individual television viewing (...) time is positively associated with anti-immigrant sentiments, while frequent exposure to news and information programs is associated with lower levels of anti-immigrant sentiments. At the aggregate level we observe a positive effect of the total viewing time in society on anti-immigrant sentiments. In the conclusion we offer some suggestions on how this effect could be explained. (shrink)