Abstract This article considers how a plurality of views on how the EU ought to be legitimated may even contribute to its overall legitimacy and not, as is often assumed, to its contestedness as a polity. It draws lessons for the EU from a recent turn in the literature on legitimacy towards analysing political systems as mechanisms for mediating between several views of legitimacy, rather than articulating any one. It identifies a range of views on how the Union ought to be legitimated. It appraises alternative mechanisms for combining or choosing between those views. It concludes with lessons for the constitutional development of the Union.
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