Communication Rights, Democracy and Legitimacy

In its totality, the present work seeks to relate the discourse around communication rights to debates about democratic legitimacy, specifically elaborating its relevance for the emerging polity of the EU. Empirically it aims at identifying the most salient measures taken at EU level that impact communication rights of its citizens and, more specifically, at providing a critical analysis of the incorporation and development of one of the most important of these rights in EU law and policy; the right to information. The first part of this book seeks to clarify the concept of communication rights from a historical perspective and to sketch the development of the international political and scholarly discourse. The second part links the concept to ongoing scholarly debate concerning the legitimation of supranational rule-making and argues for the recognition of communication rights as essential entitlement of European citizens. Next, the most relevant areas of EU policy and law which affect those rights are identified and analyzed. Lastly, the right to access to information, will be examined more closely by means of two separate case studies.