Closing or Widening the Gap?

’Looking at the 'legitimacy gap' of regional governance from a comparative perspective, this book substantially enhances and broadens our understanding of international regionalism and the alleged 'democracy deficits' that go with it. An original and persuasive book whose findings on how best to close the gap are far-reaching and illuminating.’ Heiner Hänggi, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland '...approaches a seriously understudied question in research on regionalism. For a long time, the analysis of legitimacy and democracy in regional organizations has been limited to the European Union. As this volume demonstrates, there is a lot we can learn from interregional comparison. ' Frank Schimmelfennig, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 'This excellent volume provides a highly insightful analysis of legitimacy and democracy in the context of regional integration. Bringing together a well edited collection of consistently interesting essays, this book takes the literature on regionalism a long way forward and serves as a timely reminder of the continuing value of robust comparative work in this field.' Ben Rosamond, University of Warwick, UK '...provides a valuable comparative assessment of regional governance legitimacy and democracy with a broad geographical focus. It offers theoretically derived research questions, empirical indicators and a qualitative comparative analysis of the effective legitimacy of Northern and Southern regional international organizations. The role of regional parliaments, subnational state actors and non-state actors is evaluated with a view to deepening legitimacy. The nexus between the levels of domestic and regional democracy is indicated in addition to variation across regional governance legitimacy.' Maria Regina Soares de Lima, Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro, IUPERJ, Brasil