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In what manner is political time institutionalized in the political system of the EU? This article advances five propositions on political time in the EU and highlights their implications for the workings of the EU. The propositions stress: (i) the absence of a dominant EU political cycle, which creates problems of mobilization and synchronization, but also allows for temporal plurality; (ii) an emphasis on linear political time, associated with ongoingness and open-endedness, as opposed to cyclical political time, which favours discontinuity in institutional practices and policies; (iii) intensive bargaining over time-setting, which encourages governing by timetable; (iv) the sensitivity of EU political time to member state influence, on the one hand, and (v) the Europeanization of political time in the member states, on the other. The balances struck in the temporal constitution of the EU are critical to its future.
This article outlines how the notion of an EU timescape may be developed into a fruitful research agenda. It sets out central tasks involved, including clarification of the concept of an EU timescape; of the key empirical questions to be asked; and of the status of political time in variable-oriented research. The article illustrates the potential value-added of a time-centred approach to the study of the EU by highlighting temporal issues in EU enlargement, differentiated integration and democratization. It concludes with thoughts on the comparison of democratic timescapes.