Producing Institutional Legitimacy in the European Parliament: The Case of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs

Within the European Union, the European Parliament should be considered one of the main venues for the practice of political power, being an institutional space whose democratic deficit is compensated by the staging of internal expertise produced and sustained by elected representatives who accumulate resources, both internal and external to the institution. This paper develops this hypothesis focusing on the case of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. Even though this Committee deals with a sector that is far from practicing joint decision making, it hosts parliamentary elites. Expertise on the institutional challenges faced by the EU lies first and foremost and the valorization of the political, academic, and European legitimacy of a powerful group made up of elected representatives assisted by collaborators and administrators.