Playground or Democratisation? New Participatory Procedures at the European Commission
✍ Scribed by Thorsten Hüller
- Publisher
- Swiss Political Science Association
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- German
- Weight
- 557 KB
- Volume
- 16
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1420-3529
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In the previous decade, the European Commission has promoted direct citizen involvement in European Union (EU) affairs via institutions such as deliberative polls, citizen conferences, online consultations or citizens' initiatives. Do these instruments foster EU democratisation? In this article, the Commission's participatory turn is re‐constructed. Against the yardstick of a democracy theoretical framework, two participatory instruments (European Citizens' Consultations and the Commission's online consultations) are assessed. Both instruments are seriously flawed: the ECC cannot resolve the trade‐off between demanding and egalitarian participation, and remains almost unrecognised outside the forum (bridging problem). Online consultations suffer both from a lack of active participation and of the symbolic accountability of the Commission to the contributions of ordinary citizens.