Staying, Shifting, Simultaneous or Shared? Four Conceptions of Popular Sovereignty in the EU and How to Institutionalise Them.

The Brexit has placed the EU's future high on the political and academic agenda. One particular concern remains the appropriate way to confer democratic legitimacy on EU governance. This paper aims to show that the concept of popular sovereignty is fruitful to distinguish between visions of EU democracy. Four competing conceptions of popular sovereignty, so I submit, are prominent in contemporary debates: national, supranational, simultaneous and shared. Often obscured is that each position implies a very distinct vision on the appropriate way to organise parliamentary oversight of EU governance. The article yields a parsimonious framework to analyse contemporary conflicts on the (rightful) place of sovereignty in the EU polity.